


my immortal

by lunchables



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Alternate Universe, F/F, Not Really Character Death, Plot-heavy, Slow Burn, Swearing, a lot of feelings, ghost au, i'm making one, is there a 'trust me' tag?, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunchables/pseuds/lunchables
Summary: “I’m not sure what it is you’re looking to hear,” Adora says slowly, “but do you believe in ghosts?”Catra’s scowl hardens even further. “Don’t. Don’t you dare go there.”“All I mean is, from everything I’ve studied, this shouldn’t be possible. Either you're a princess of a faraway land that I don’t know about, which is highly unlikely, or…”“Or what?” Catra snaps. “Are you trying to tell me you think I’m fucking dead?”a ghost au
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 231
Kudos: 606





	1. this is about somebody else, so don't worry yourself

**Author's Note:**

> so this takes place in canonverse in the sense that it's on etheria, and for the most part we've got the same kingdoms, princesses, and the horde etc — otherwise you can disregard all events of the show

The first time Adora sees her, she is not afraid.

It’s not that kind of story. There is no scream, and she does not call for help.

Adora can still count on one hand the number of real, living people she’s ever met when they meet. 

Catra is the fifth.

⚔

Adora stands on the indigo shore, still a generous way from the bridge, listening to the faint, gentle lap of the water nearly at her dark boots. She looks up at the winged aurelian castle hanging above her much like how an infant takes in the novelty of a new world with fresh tears still in its eyes. She watches the massive waterfall that looms from the stone cliff behind it pour down, the glittering opal runestone suspended in the atmosphere, more magnetic than the poles, more captivating than a god.

This is the second time she’s been here. This is the first time she’s alone.

There are no tears. Just wonder.

“Where the hell am I?”

Adora turns at the voice, and she sees her. Even if Adora hadn’t been studying the customs and culture of this queendom for the last two months, she would still know this girl isn’t from here. Her clothes are dark, the colors of shadow and blood, but she wears an expression that Adora imagines resembles her own. There’s a red insignia on the shoulder of one dark sleeve, one Adora knows that she recognizes, but in this moment she struggles to place it. And, inexplicably, this stranger does not wear shoes.

“Brightmoon,” Adora answers after a moment. This may be the fifth person she’s ever spoken to, but she is only the second Adora has ever been alone with. It’s thrilling, this mundane exchange, and Adora’s heart races.

The girl’s eyes widen — two different colors, Adora notices. She wants to see the world through eyes like those.

“Seriously?”

“Yes…?” Adora’s not sure why she questions herself now. “Are you lost?”

The girl begins to back away, shaking her head slowly, her ears pressing back flat to her head. “No. No, but I must be fucking dreaming.”

 _Fucking._ Huh. She’s never heard that aloud before, nor read the full uncensored version of it. She just barely refrains from repeating it back to the stranger before the woman turns and makes a break for the Whispering Woods. Well, so much for that.

“Good luck!” Adora calls after her.

She turns back to the castle, takes a deep breath. 

She can do this.

⚔

The fact that Catra turns out to not even be— well, _alive_ — it feels like someone is mocking her.

So Adora’s not sure if she can count her as anything on her list anymore.

⚔

The second time Adora sees her, she is not afraid.

At first.

“This roasted duck is delicious, Queen Angella. I’ve read wonderful things about Brightmoon’s cuisine, but nothing lives up to the true experience.”

“Thank you, Adora.” Queen Angella dabs her mouth with a violet cloth before splaying it back in her lap. “Though I must confess I am not the one deserving of your compliments.”

“Yeah, thank the kitchen,” Glimmer snorts across the table. “Mom’s famous for a lot of things here, but what the people are most grateful for is that she stays away from the oven.”

“Close your mouth when you chew, dear. And don’t—” Angella holds up one finger, her eyes stern, “—stick your tongue out to spite me, I beg of you.”

The wry smirk that forms on Glimmer’s face says that was exactly what she was about to do, and she sinks back into her meal. Adora looks back and forth between them, at Angella’s near-invisible fond smile, at Glimmer stifling a laugh as she stuffs in another mouthful of steamed scallion rice.

Adora’s read about this sort of thing. The familial bond. She’s never longed for it until now.

“Tell us what else you have read of our customs, Adora.” There’s still a hint of amusement in Angella’s voice, an undercurrent of happiness that feels like an inside joke Adora can only observe.

“Well, as you know, most of my reading material at the athenaeum was—” 

A figure phases through the large doors, and three rather unremarkable things happen at once.

First, Adora frowns, because surely she saw that wrong — no one in Brightmoon other than the princess has the power to apparate through physical matter, of that she’s certain.

Second, she realizes it’s the same stranger from the shore just earlier this evening.

And third, the stranger’s mismatched-colored eyes laser in on Adora, and they flare with an intensity that is stricken with both rage and fear.

“You,” the girl snarls and immediately charges across the room towards her.

Adora’s mouth hangs open around the words that have died in her mouth. 

“Adora? Are you alright?” Angella asks, completely unfazed by the disruption, looking at Adora with concern.

The girl has barreled up beside Adora, having crossed over in the blink of an eye, and Adora nearly topples out of her chair at their proximity.

“What did you _do_ to me?” the stranger demands in a shout.

Beyond rattled, Adora looks to the queen and the princess, and they both wear similar expressions of apprehension. 

Adora swallows thickly, looking between the three different women until settling finally on the stranger. “Um, excuse me?” 

“I _said,_ what the—”

“I asked if you—”

“— _fuck_ kind of princess bullshit—”

“—were alright. You were telling us—”

“—did you rope me into?”

“—about your studies at home.”

Both the stranger and Angella talk over each other with little care for the other, and even with her high marks in multitasking, it’s all Adora can do to grasp what they both say.

She’s still at a loss for words, and everyone is staring at her like she’s the one who’s acting out of the ordinary. Luckily, the stranger speaks again.

“They can’t see me,” she grits out, revealing a glimpse of sharp fangs. “Nobody can except you, so you better start talking now or I am gonna make this night _very_ unpleasant for you.”

This… must be a test, right?

Adora was under the impression that coming through with her mission here in Brightmoon would be a bit more independent, the examinations a thing of the past, but now she wonders if that assumption was a mistake.

It’s been years since Adora was tested on her composure, but perhaps that could be the point. She’s no longer expecting these tests of alarm, and so that sets up the perfect environment for it. Well, Adora is nothing if not an impeccable student.

She ignores the girl — the distraction in this test of focus.

“I apologize, your highness. It’s been a long few days of travelling, and I’m just a bit scatter-brained at the moment.”

Angella waves a hand. “Of course, of course. Don’t mind me. Please, enjoy your dinner.”

“No, don’t pull this act, I _know_ you can hear me.” 

“She doesn’t really know the difference between getting to know someone and interrogating them,” Glimmer says. “You get used to it eventually.”

Adora laughs (clean, succinct, polite — exactly as she’s been taught), even as the stranger continues to rave on aggravatedly. “No worries at all, I don’t feel interrogated.”

“What’s the matter with you? Why are you doing this to me? Just, undo whatever it is, and take me _back_.”

“You should’ve seen the way she grilled Bow for the first time. Now that was just flat-out mean.”

“Oh, goodness.” Angella rolls her eyes, in a manner that is definitively not the proper royal-dining etiquette that Adora has been drilled to prepare for. “Yes, I’m a monster for being concerned about a young boy wandering the woods at night. Convict me.”

Adora can see the stranger reaching for her shoulder from her peripheral. “ _Please_ , I’m begging you to just stop.”

When Adora laughs again, it’s a little less rehearsed and more natural. “Who’s Bo—?”

She gasps as an arctic chill far colder than any of the snow or ice Adora has fallen into as a child passes through her. It steals the breath from her lungs like a punch, and even with two decades of her amassed pain tolerance, the shock of it still springs tears to the corners of her eyes.

As soon as it came, it’s already gone.

Like she’s just run a long sprint, Adora’s pristine posture collapses and she gasps for air, hunching over the table.

Angella and Glimmer both immediately shoot to their feet, the former sputtering questions that land empty on Adora’s cotton-ball ears. The queen rushes to her side to check on her, but Adora can barely register the woman’s touch, the hands on her forehead and shoulder.

The stranger is sprawled on the floor beside Adora, on the opposite side of Adora that she’d been just a moment ago. She looks just as surprised and appalled as Adora feels, eyes wide and terrified.

“What did you just do to me?” Adora manages to squeeze out.

Angella finally expresses the confusion and surprise this situation warrants. She pulls back with alarm. “I’m sorry? Have I done—”

“I’m telling you, they can’t see me.”

“—something to upset you?”

Clutching at her chest like she can feel the ache in her lungs still, Adora looks down on the stranger in horror. It finally registers what she’s been trying to tell her, but—

No, that can’t be right. It doesn’t make any sense. Adora would know if there was some princess out there with a power of invisibility. Or— _Or—_

Except the queen and princess are both acting as if there is no one else in the room, fawning over Adora like she’s suddenly fallen ill. Their expressions don’t so much as twitch when the stranger speaks.

Adora worries, for a moment, that she’s losing her mind. She can’t quite bring herself to ask if they can see her too. Instead: “Are we… alone?”

“Alone?” Angella struggles for the proper words bewilderedly. “Of course not, darling. There’s guards posted in every corridor.”

“Whatever it is you’re doing,” the stranger says from the floor with less fervor, despair now thick in her voice, a feeling much like the dread that is sinking in Adora’s stomach now. “Please stop this.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Like this is both the best and worst thing Adora could have said, the stranger’s face crumples.

“It really has been quite a long day for you, hasn’t it?” Angella touches her forehead again. “Perhaps you’re overdue for some rest. Glimmer, will you show Adora to her—?”

“No,” Adora interrupts, then immediately flushes. “Excuse me, um please, I’m fine. It’s just— as you said, I’m very exhausted. Please, I’ve disrupted your dinner enough as it is. I can find my way again, Juliet escorted me earlier.”

“What are you doing?” the stranger asks.

Angella frowns, but to Adora’s surprise, she complies quickly with a nod. 

The walk from the table to the exit of the room might just be the longest of Adora’s life. But any relief she expected once she finally breaks into the hall is misplaced, because of course the stranger follows after her. She only starts talking more once in the quiet of the corridor.

“What’s going on? Why can you see me? Why are you still _ignoring_ me?”

“I must have completely lost my mind,” Adora mutters under her breath. 

“Who the hell are you, and why are you here? You’re not from Brightmoon.”

Adora bristles. “How would you know that?”

It’s the wrong time to finally address her, because a guard comes into view at the bend of the hall. “Are you alright, Marquess?” 

_No, I’m having a hallucination and now I seem to be speaking to it._

“Fine.” Adora’s voice breaks at a terribly cracked pitch. “Everything is fine, thank you.”

The stranger’s questions continue, but Adora pointedly ignores them still until she’s finally — _finally_ — burst into her private chambers, and she all but slams the doors behind her, her breath laden with anxiety.

The stranger phases through the door, and Adora chokes back a frustrated sob.

“You’re a dick,” she tells Adora.

“Who on Etheria _are_ you?” she asks at last, like refraining from doing so has kept her underwater and she’s only now just come up for air.

“Catra. Who the hell are you?”

“I-I don’t understand.”

“Who. Are. You.”

“Adora. Adora Grayskull, Marquess of Eternia.”

“Marquess of _what_?”

“Eternia. It’s up north.” Adora thinks she might be sick. She’s talking to a figment of her imagination. “Very north, past the Kingdom of Snows.”

Catra’s brow furrows. “You don’t mean the First Ones, do you?”

Adora shuts her eyes shut in frustration at the old term that the other kingdoms assigned to her home. “We prefer Eternia.”

“What did you do to me?”

“Did I eat something poisonous?” Adora asks aloud to herself, her eyes glazing over. “There were those berries by the prairie, but — no, I know those were wolfberries. They had to be. But I haven’t had anything else since this morning, and I packed my own rations.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe it’s the climate. I don’t know what else it could be. Today wasn’t very hot, but the air is a lot thicker down here, maybe—”

“Okay, listen to me? I promise you, I’m real.”

Adora chances a look at the girl again. The chestnut spread of freckles over her cheekbones, her well-fitted clothes, the sweep of her tail over the floor, her sharp ears that flick slightly the longer Adora continues to stare at her.

The queasiness hasn’t lessened in the slightest. “That sounds exactly like something a hallucination would say.”

“What? You get those often?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Then I’m not a damn hallucination.”

“Then who are you?”

Catra groans, and she turns back and stalks deeper into the vast room. “I already told you. Catra. I’m from the Fright Zone.”

That chokes a laugh out of Adora, this one very much undignified and impolite, but there’s no one around to scold her for her break in poise. 

“You can’t be serious? The Fright Zone?”

“Oh, shit, don’t start with me.”

“I’m sorry, start what? Point out the fact that you’re living on stolen land? How you worship a violent colonizer? Or do you want me to not mention how much waste your factories are dumping into the planet?”

Catra looks back at her just to roll her eyes. “I really think we have more important things to worry about right now.”

“ _We_?” Adora paces past Catra and waves her hands in a clearing gesture. “No, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m sorry this is happening to you, but I can’t help you. You need to— to leave.”

“I’ve been running through this entire palace screaming my head off, and you’re literally the only person who’s given me a second glance.”

“Have you considered it might be because of that?” Adora waves to the insignia on Catra’s shoulder that she only just now remembers to be a symbol of the Horde. 

“No, okay, it’s not like that, I’m telling you. It’s like— Okay look, just watch this.” Catra stalks towards the voluptuous setup of Adora’s bed.

“Do you mind?” Adora sighs. “With all due respect, I do not know where you’ve been, and that’s where I plan to sleep.”

“With all due respect, fuck you.” 

“I don’t know what you’re trying—”

Much like she’d strolled through the door as if it wasn’t there, Catra phases through the bed. But — _phase_ isn’t quite the right word. The atoms of the bed don’t flicker or vibrate around Catra’s form, don’t quite phase out of their solid form to accommodate hers. She just… _exists_ as an image through the bed. The bottom half of her body is completely obscured, disappearing into the undisturbed mattress. Adora blinks, watching Catra stand in the middle of the bed like— like—

Like she’s not there at all.

“How are you— You’re not the Fright Zone’s princess. How are you doing that?”

Catra’s laugh is almost anything but, instead a seething and sour thing out of her mouth. “Don’t even think about finishing that thought. I am _not_ a princess. And we never had—”

“How else would you explain what you’re doing? No one on Etheria is supposed to have powers without a heritage to a throne.”

“This isn’t some fucking special power.” Catra storms out of the bed, her legs reappearing like the holograms Adora’s grown up with. “It’s just— I don’t know how to explain it.”

“What do you feel?”

A shadow crosses over Catra’s face, her jaw clenches stiffly. “I can’t feel anything.”

“What does that mean? Like paralysis? Your motor capacity seems functional.”

Catra gives her a curious look, but she seems to shake off whatever she’s thinking. “No, like — I can move and talk and do all that, but it’s like nothing’s there. I can’t feel the ground under my feet. I can’t feel the air on my skin. You’ve already seen what happens when I try to touch anything. The only thing I’ve felt so far is…”

“What?”

“When I passed through you.” Catra looks both uncomfortable with her words and annoyed with Adora’s interruptions. “I was trying to get your attention, to listen to me, and obviously when I tried to grab you, I just fell through you, but it was—”

“Cold.” Adora’s blood feels thin just at the memory of the bone-deep chill, how sharp and sudden. 

The look on Catra’s face is either nauseous or surprised, Adora can’t really tell. 

“I’m not sure what it is you’re looking to hear,” Adora says slowly, “but do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts.”

She nods, and Catra’s scowl hardens even further. 

“Don’t. Don’t go there.”

“All I mean is, from everything I’ve studied, this shouldn’t be possible. Either you are a princess of a faraway land that I don’t know about, which is highly unlikely, or…”

“Or what?” Catra snaps. “I’m a ghost? Are you trying to tell me you think I’m fucking dead?”

She draws in a long breath and shakes her head. “Look, I am genuinely sorry this is happening to you, whatever it may be, but I can’t help you.”

“You’re serious? That’s it? You’re some pompous know-it-all when it comes to anything else, and now you want to play dumb?”

Adora rolls the words around in her mouth, the strange phrase she hasn’t heard before. She can only assume what it means. “I’m not playing the dumb.”

Catra just stares at her. 

“I’m afraid—” Adora cuts herself off, reevaluates. “I cannot be involved with a Horde soldier. In any capacity.”

“You know you’re better than this.”

Adora _laughs_. “You don’t know anything about me.” 

Catra pauses, looking almost confused as her ears begin to tuck back. Her tail twitches before it curls inward towards herself. She shakes her head disorientedly. “Whatever. I don’t need your help. You wanna relax and lounge away up in this prissy palace with all these fancy servants, fine. You can shit on the Horde all you want, but at least we’re not cowards.”

“Go seek them out for help, then.”

“Fine, I will.”

“Fine!”

When Catra vanishes through the door, Adora realizes again how hard her chest pounds, how fast her blood pumps in her ears. 

This is… a lot. Was? 

This is not what she read about Brightmoon, and this is not how she anticipated meeting people to feel like. If she can even call whatever just happened as _meeting_ someone at all.

Adora drops down to the bed, her face falling into her hands. 

Could this really still be another test? It’s certainly a more comforting notion than insanity or nightmarish ghost stories. Of course she’d been assured that there would be no interference from home during her stay in Brightmoon, but this wouldn’t be the first time the truth has been bent for her in the name of a training exercise.

Her temples throb. If this is a test, it’s unlike any she’s been through so far.

“Yeah, I can’t leave the grounds.”

She startles at Catra’s return. “What— Why not? Did someone stop you?”

Catra levels her with a droll look. “Yeah, one of the guards told me I’m a prisoner. No, I literally can’t leave.”

“I don’t know what that means. Is the exit blocked?”

“No, it—” Catra hesitates with a grimace. “It was like before, but… I don’t know. Everything got really hot. I made it halfway across the bridge before it got to be too much. I thought I was burning alive, and then I tried going through the water, but it didn’t change anything. I can’t leave.”

Adora frowns. “You were gone for barely five minutes, how did you try all that?”

“What? I left like an hour ago.”

After Catra’s inspected the sundial that Adora gestures to, seeing that little to no time has in fact passed, everything starts to feel sour again.

“Maybe I do just need some rest,” Adora mutters. “Maybe Angella was right, and this has all been because of a long few days of travelling.”

“I don’t think a nap is going to give me my body back.”

“I’m slightly more concerned about my own mental stability at the moment.”

“Yeah, you should be.“

That gets Adora to look at her again. “Why? Do you know something?”

“No, but if I find out that _you_ do, then you bet your sorry ass I’ll make this hell for you.”

Adora barely refrains from rolling her eyes. “I don’t know who killed you, I’m not even from here. I just arrived today.”

“And I’m not _dead._ ”

“That doesn’t make much of a difference to me.”

“Question: are all First Ones this selfish, or are you just special?”

Adora’s fists clench at her sides, and she bites into her cheek. “I told you already, I don’t know anything that can help you.”

“Cool, you’re just useless then, got it.”

“So leave me alone.” 

“Are you even listening to me? There is no one else.”

Something harsh stirs in Adora’s chest, unfamiliar. “That doesn’t make it my problem.”

Catra raises an eyebrow, regarding Adora with crossed arms and a look that should not be as threatening as it is, coming from a ghost. 

“Trust me, _Marquess_ ,” Catra says coldly. “I can make it your problem.”

The delivery would’ve been more successful if she hadn’t punctuated the threat with an attempt to lean back against a column jutting out from the wall. With a shrill yelp, Catra proceeds to fall through the marble and disappears from sight entirely. 

She’s back a moment later, unfortunately, and Adora drops her head back into her hands. 

⚔

_Adora bathes in darkness, and a sickly sweat cakes over her arms and chest._

_“You can’t stop me.”_

_Did she just say that? The words feel like crumbs on her tongue, impossible to keep or hold._

_The voice that speaks next is one with the dark. “I know.”_

_“I won’t let you.” Adora hears the crack in her own voice just as well as she feels the choke in her throat._

_“I won’t try to. On the contrary, I want to help you.”_

_The affirmation does nothing to quell the burn of loss aflame in her chest._

⚔

Adora wakes with a sob, startled, gasping for air.

She composes. Breathes. Splashes water over her face.

By breakfast, she’s forgotten.

⚔

“You can’t avoid me forever.”

“Watch me.”

“There’s literally nowhere you can go that I can’t.”

“At least I can leave Brightmoon.”

“Oh, by all means.” Catra makes a sweeping gesture towards the bridge behind her that leads to the shoreline at the edge of the Whispering Woods, where they first met. “Please go ahead and leave, and let me know how well that goes for you. Tell the Horde I say hi when your sorry ass gets captured.”

Before Adora can scrounge up a retort, to inform her that she made it here just fine without running into enemy territory (thank you very much), Glimmer skips out the double castle doors with a boy their age closely in tow. Adora tries to not let her relief appear too obvious, because arguing with Catra and trying to come up with answers to her ridiculous taunts is much more tiring than Adora expected.

The four of them stand on the front terrace outside the castle entrance, just at the top of the sloping path that leads down into Brightmoon’s village. 

“Hey again,” Glimmer pats Adora’s bicep with a cheerful smile, and Adora tries not to flinch at the touch. “You ready to get going?”

“Ready for what? What are we doing?” Catra asks, and Adora has to resist the urge to answer her.

“You don’t mind if Bow tags along, do you? His dads are history buffs, so he’s honestly better at these tours than I am.”

Catra groans. “A tour? Oh Etheria, kill me now.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Adora mutters, and Glimmer tilts her head in confusion.

“Are you sure you’re up for this today?” the princess asks gently. “I know you’ve had a long few days.”

The ghost snorts. “How fragile do they think you are exactly?”

She wants to remind Catra that that part is essentially her fault, but. If it’s going to be like this all day, Adora will really need to come to terms with letting Catra have the last and only word on just about everything.

“Yes, I’m fine, and of course he’s welcome.” Adora paints a polite smile for him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Bow gives a shallow bow to her, crossing an arm over his hip. “Pleasure’s all mine, Marquess Adora.”

Of course Adora knows her title, but it’s still strange to be treated as nobility. “Just Adora is fine, really.”

“Hey.” Glimmer elbows him and he jostles back straight up. “You’ve never bowed to me.”

“Your mom told me not to.”

“That bitch, of course she did.”

Adora finds herself exchanging a glance with Catra. 

“Whatever, let’s just get moving before I find an excuse to go back in and pick another fight with her. We only just finally finished one. Can you believe it?” Glimmer huffs. “Four hours, all because of one dirty sock.”

Bow laughs as they begin to trek down the hill for the village, and he looks over Glimmer’s head to Adora. “Are your princess and queen like this?”

“Um, excuse me,” Glimmer interjects haughtily. “Like what?

“You know what.”

“I don’t. Spell it out for me, and we’ll see if you live to see tomorrow.”

“Are we going to listen to this all day?” Catra whispers unnecessarily close to Adora’s ear, and she jumps. The only reply she can manage is a glare she hopes conveys her irritation.

“You okay there?”

Adora looks back, and the two friends are wary again. This ordeal is more exhausting than the drills she went through in preparation for any eight-hour certification exam.

“Yes, I thought I heard something,” she answers smoothly. “Um, as for your questions, no, I don’t believe they were.”

Their concerned looks turn quizzical. “Were?” Bow asks.

Adora always knew Eternia was extremely private compared to the other kingdoms due to their seclusion and history, and that there would be an adjustment curve to figuring out what’s already known, but she thought they would at least have already been told _this_. Surely Angella had already been told.

“The princess was killed just after I was born. The queen didn’t leave an heir, and she passed late last year.”

This only adds to their confusion, but most prominently, Adora can feel the burn of Catra’s stare on the side of her face.

Bow’s brow knits more tightly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Wait, who did my mom talk to then?” Glimmer asks. “I thought she was your queen? The one who you first came here with when you visited a few months ago.”

Adora shakes her head. “That was the Grandmaster.”

“Oh. Sorry, this is just all really new for us. The First Ones have never shared information like this with us before. Or, I mean, any information. With anyone.”

“Eternia,” Adora corrects. “Yes, I understand. I was told to expect as much.”

“So, your queen died without an heir, and that’s why you’re here now? Are you meant to take her place?”

Adora’s somewhat cautious about sharing anything in front of someone of Catra’s kind, but she reasons there’s only so much damage a dead person can do. “I’m not actually a part of the royal family, my position is more academic than noble. I was chosen by the queen when I was born to be raised as a marquess. The Grandmaster has stepped up to lead, and she decided that during this transition it might be best for our people if we open our borders, so to speak. Share our culture, learn of the others, establish peace and connection.”

“Hence why you’re here,” Bow finishes thoughtfully, and Adora nods. “You’re an academic, you said?” 

“Yes. Typically, a marquess is raised as a scholar of seclusion until the age of twenty-five, but after the fall of the queen, my role has changed and my training is considered complete. Now I’m more what you might call… a diplomat.”

“Seclusion?” Glimmer asks, and Adora finds herself biting her tongue.

She was told this would be considered strange, by some.

It’s only now that Adora realizes how Catra has said nothing for the last few minutes. Adora half expects her to be gone entirely when she glances over, but Catra is looking at her with an unreadable expression. 

She’s not sure why she wishes Catra weren’t here for this part. Why it has nothing to do with the insignia on her shoulder.

“Yes. It’s custom. Both to ensure devotion for the trade and to avoid distractions, scholars are raised separate from the community.”

“And when you say separate...” Catra says, breaking her silence, and though Glimmer and Bow cannot hear her, Adora sees the same question in their faces.

“I’m the Grandmaster’s ward.” Adora is careful with her words. “It was her duty to raise me privately, and to limit my exposure to the community.”

“I can relate to that.” Glimmer shrugs, like she’s trying to make light of the situation. “My mom almost never lets me leave the castle, so I jump on any chance I can to come into the village.”

“You don’t mean it like that, do you?” Catra’s no longer whispering in her ear, but it sends a chill down her spine all the same.

Adora can’t look at her. 

“Sounds cool,” Bow says cheerfully. “I’ll have to take you to meet my dads sometime, especially if you’re looking to learn about the other kingdoms and share some of your own. They’ve always been fascinated by the First— I mean, by Eternia, so I’m sure they’d love to talk to you.”

Adora folds her hands behind her back to keep them still. She nods with a gentle smile. “Thank you, that sounds wonderful.”

“Okay, George and Lance adventure is definitely in the books, but first—” Glimmer skips out ahead of them and begins to pace backwards, facing the two of them (three) with a gleaming smile. They’ve reached the foot of the hill the castle lives on, and behind her is the entrance to what appears much livelier of a town than just the simple _village_ Adora had been expecting. 

“It’s time for your tour.”

⚔

“This is so boring.”

“Then go away.”

“I can’t.”

“You said you can’t leave the grounds, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the entire castle at your disposal.”

“I’d rather eat my tail than spend any more time than I have to in that stuffy dump.”

“It’s neither of those things. The castle is very well-ventilated.”

Catra rolls her eyes just as Bow and Glimmer return from a food cart, each with two fistfuls of food. 

“Okay, if you think the kitchens make good food, then wait ‘till you get a taste of these squid skewers. Canella makes _the_ best anchovy butter in all of Etheria.”

Catra mimes a barfing motion that Adora happily ignores.

⚔

It’s not a test, but it might as well be.

Adora never figured it’d be so simple as waltzing into Brightmoon and immediately being taken at face value, but still. She was prepared for an interrogation by Queen Angella, or even from Juliet, her head commander. If she is exposing herself as a student of knowledge, then she must be prepared to prove such a feat.

She hadn’t expected it to come from the Queen’s daughter, in the form of…

Well, this.

“Hey, what material do you think this is made of?”

Glimmer hands Adora a snowglobe off the shelf. They’re in a gift shop just outside the town’s nature reserve, and this is only one of the many questions Glimmer has asked on this trip. This is the first one that hasn’t been about any of the wildlife or greenery native to Brightmoon. They’re not particularly phrased like she’s testing her, but Adora is intimately familiar with the difference between drills and curiosity. 

Adora turns the globe around in her palms, feeling the cool texture of its translucent glass. “Which part of it?”

Based on the smile Glimmer gives her, Adora can only assume that she’s passed the first part already. “The stuff inside. What’s the snow made of?”

Figures. From what Adora knew of the other kingdoms, she knew that most knick-knacks like these were fairly standardized in their materials. Usually the glass is some composition of organic compounds derived from either plants of amber or from copal trees, mixed to form a special shatter-resistant resin. Considering the climate of Brightmoon and its fluctuating seasons, it’d be easy to assume amber.

But the sand. Adora wants to laugh, because that might as well be a trick question. The first snow globe comes from Plumeria, not Kingdom of Snows like most assume, and the “snow” was originally taken from a special plant exclusive to their territory — it produced petals that once muddled into a paste, it could be dried and ground to a fine powder insoluble in spring water. Considering such an artistic representation of snow in a land that would never see it, the toy quickly grew in popularity, and it wasn’t long before the other kingdoms would soon receive them as gifts from Plumerian residents, only to wish to forge them for themselves. 

From there, the history of snowglobes gets rather chaotic, especially so as far as trinkets go. Adora assumes Glimmer knows this. Based on Brightmoon’s amiable history of trades with Plumeria, it would be easy to assume that they stuck true to the original recipe. But Brightmoon is tricky, because they never started creating their own until late in the game, and only did so after acquiring many over the years from various kingdoms. So, of all the kingdoms, Brightmoon has the greatest variety of snow globes from all over than any other, and Adora’s answer could only be an educated guess at best.

She’s just weighing the options of taking a lottery like that, versus calling Glimmer out on asking such an impossible question, when Catra speaks.

“It’s ceramic.”

Adora barely clamps back a questioning response, because, _what?_ Of all the guesses, that would be the last on her list. 

“No, I’m serious.” Catra ducks underneath Glimmer’s hands to get a peak at the inscription on the underside of the globe in her hands, and she points to it. “It says ceramic right here. It was made in Salineas.”

Well. There’s two kinds of people.

Adora would point out that Salineas is better known for crafting snow globes with a fine white sand found on their western shores as snow, not ceramic, but.

Either Adora has indeed lost every semblance of sanity, and this is just her brain trying to sabotage her efforts, or Catra is indeed some sort of ghostly figure with a glimpse at the craft notes of the model. This isn’t the first question Glimmer has asked Adora ever-so-innocently, and it likely won’t be the last, but Adora has answered them all correctly so far. This is the only real ambiguous one Glimmer has thrown at her. If anything, Adora assumes Glimmer is actually expecting her to get this wrong.

Adora is of course a perfectionist, but always an analyst first. She has an opportunity here.

“Ceramic flakes,” she answers, not faring another glance at Catra. “It’s traditionally a material used in Mystacor, but Salineas has been known from time to time to borrow their techniques.”

Glimmer’s eyes narrow. “Where’d you get Salineas from?”

Adora shoots a brief look to Catra, who shrugs in response, and she’s forced to wrack her own brain. 

“Because…” Her eyes flit back to the snowglobe. It’s rather ordinary on most accounts — just a lone tree with foliage hanging over a painted bench the color of the sea. There’s nothing remarkable about its contents, the shape of the base, the curve of the glass, or—

The water.

“Do you mind?” Adora holds out her hand and Glimmer passes the globe. 

Adora makes a point to not look at the same inscription Catra had peaked at, though she can still feel the girl’s smug eyes on her. Looking at the toy now, Adora rocks the glass around, trying to catch the water in the light, and — sure enough, it shines.

“There.” Adora holds it up and stands a bit closer to the princess. “Do you see how it shimmers in the light?”

“Kind of? Looks a little dirty.”

“Not dirt. Pearl dust. Little signature Salineas likes to mark their products with sometimes. Not so much anymore, but you still see it now and then.”

“Oh. Huh.” Glimmer takes the globe back and flips it over, and the few seconds she uses to regard the inscription are some of the longest of Adora’s life.

She looks back up with a smirk. “Well shit. I didn’t even know what it was. What the hell are they teaching you up in that fortress?”

Adora can’t help her own smile that forms, and when she looks over again, Catra wears something similar on her mouth.

⚔

“What’s the last thing you remember? Before, you know, here.”

Bow and Glimmer are occupied by a hole-in-the-wall jam shop, something about a new pastry recipe they’re itching to try, and Adora opted to stay outside. She leans against the shopfront wall just under a shade sail, and she gives her best effort to appear conspicuous as she speaks to the invisible girl beside her, eyes fixed ahead on the passing villagers.

“Me?” 

Adora stifles a laugh. “I would make a joke that no, I’m speaking to the other figment of my imagination, but I suppose I might very well be talking to myself either way. Yes, you.”

“So you do know what sarcasm is. Who would’ve thought.”

That forces Adora to look over. She glares. “I studied the history, literature and linguistics of humorology for three years, thank you.”

“Wow, you even made something funny sound boring.”

Adora faces forward again. “Fine. Forget I asked anything.”

She hears a quiet sigh, and after a moment of silence between them filled only by the popcorn chatter of the town, Catra finally answers.

“I was in the middle of a training exercise. My commanding officer had just pulled me aside to tell me something.”

“Commanding officer? You were a soldier?”

“A cadet, but yeah. We all were.” Catra frowns. “Are.”

Adora tucks that bit of information away for a later time. “What else?”

“I… I’m not really sure. I was pissed off, I think, and she was trying to stop me from doing something, but I don’t remember what.”

“Okay.” Adora struggles to piece the unhelpfully vague details together, but with how little information she’s ever had access to about the Horde, the mental image is infuriatingly blurry. “Pretending I haven’t completely lost touch with reality for a second… Your superior, is there any chance she could be relevant to this?”

“Shadow Weaver? I guess, but probably not. She has it out for me yeah, and the power to pull off whatever the hell this is, but I dunno what she’d gain from it. We were working together on a project, and I know for a fact that she can’t do it without me.”

Interesting name, Adora thinks with a frown. “What was the project?”

When Catra doesn’t reply, Adora looks again only to find she’s being scrutinized. 

“What?”

“For someone who doesn’t want to help, you’re sure asking a lot of questions.”

“Considering I am an ambassador deployed in Brightmoon to research extralocal affairs, and you’re from a combatant territory but currently stuck as a ghost here, then—”

“Stop calling me that.”

“...then I do have a responsibility here,” Adora finishes pointedly. Being particular about semantics doesn't change the situation at hand. “To understand, at the very least. Assuming I’m not insane.”

“So, what? Are you saying you’ll help me or are you trying to justify listening to your delusions?”

Adora shrugs. “Maybe I can do both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> humorology isn't really the name for the study of humor but guess what? i don't care


	2. the moth doesn't care if the flame is real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi xx 
> 
> thanks for your comments so far!! it's really cool hearing what you've picked up on/what you like

By the time they finish their day in the village, the sky is smeared with pink and orange hues like a dish of sorbet, and Adora is utterly exhausted.

She went from spending twenty years with only one real other person for company to meeting an entire village in a day. Her palms still tingle from all the hands she shook, her jaw still tender from so much talking (a feeling she used to only associate with recitation day, not _socializing_ ), and her lips are beginning to chap from so much forced smiling _._

“Sorry for all the grilling,” Glimmer says once they reach the castle doors they started at. “Normally I let my mom handle all that button-pushing, but she’s been a little distracted lately, so. Figured I’d pitch in a little. If I play my cards right, this might just count as my chores for the week.”

They linger outside on the plumstone terrace, idling and quiet. Both the sunset and the shining moonstone hanging in the sky frame the backdrop behind Glimmer, and Adora thinks for a moment there might be more to the princess than simply being the queen’s daughter. Though, for the life of her, Adora couldn’t pinpoint where this intuition comes from.

“She quizzed you for half an hour on _ancient_ military formations. Grilling my ass.” Catra crosses her arms and moves to slump back against the castle wall. “I don’t trust her.” 

Even if Adora hadn’t been preoccupied with the other two, she still wouldn’t have had time to remind the Horde girl of her predicament, and Catra collapses through the stone wall with a shrill yelp.

“It’s not a problem,” Adora tells Glimmer, doing her best to hold in a laugh. “You’ve been more than welcoming to me into your own home.”

“Better me than her, anyway. You’re just lucky I didn’t ask you about the schools. Half the time, I don’t think the staff even knows what goes on in there.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“So since we’ve gotten all the formalities out of the way,” Bow says as he slings his arms around both their shoulders, “What d’you two say we raid the kitchen for some sponge cake and call it a day? I found an old Kowl Trap board at the library, and Glimmer and I have been needing a third person to play.”

Adora stiffens under his arm but does her best to keep her reaction neutral. She knew beforehand from her developmental psychology studies that physical contact would be the most difficult custom to get used to no matter where she went, but the anticipation isn’t much for comfort now. 

She takes in both their expectant smiles, uncertain. As much as a night of cake and games sounds like the novel sort of experience she was excited to have in Brightmoon, she finds herself reluctant. Drills and quizzes are one thing, but this is another beast entirely that Adora has little training for.

“Thank you, but perhaps another time. I think I might stay out for a bit longer and take a stroll, if that’s alright.”

She’s not sure if it’s disappointment on their faces, if that’s just the feeling stirring in her own gut, but they are quick to assure her still.

Once they’ve gone back inside, Adora finally glances around herself. 

“Catra?” she whispers loudly, patting down the wall she disappeared into. “Are you still here?”

“Fun fact.” Catra comes phasing through the main double doors Glimmer and Bow just went through. “There is no room on the other side of that wall.”

“Where did you go?”

“Dropped to the wine cellar. And they keep a _lot_ more than just wine down there, let me tell you.” When Adora opens her mouth, Catra huffs and waves a hand. “Don’t ask. Adventure for another time. Where’d Sparkles and the butler go?”

“Glimmer and Bow,” she corrects. “He’s not her butler.”

“We have to work on your sarcasm.”

“Sarcasm is conveyed by exaggerated tone. If you don’t vary your prosody enough then how is anyone supposed to know that’s what you’re doing?”

Catra raises an eyebrow. “Exactly how private did you say your upbringing was?”

“I didn’t. Let’s go.” Adora turns for the bridge.

“Go where? I’m on kingdom-arrest, remember?”

Adora gives Catra a sideways glance as she falls into step with her. “Exactly. I want to see what happens when you try to leave.”

“I already told you, I start cooking like an oil tanker.”

“That is what happens to your somatosensory system, yes, but I’m interested in seeing how that manifests in your physical form.”

Catra tips her head back with a groan. “Why are you so fucking weird?”

“I’m a scholar, and you’re a ghost. The scientific method is about all we have right now.”

“Yeah, I’m putting a ban on the g-word.”

Adora stops in the middle of the bridge and makes a motion towards the stone beneath them. “Okay, so where does it get to be too much? How bad is it right now?”

Catra blinks as she takes in their position, like she’s only just now realized where they are. Her brow pinches. “It’s… not.”

“I thought you said this was as far as you got before.”

“It _is._ ” Catra spins in a circle, patting herself down. “I don’t feel anything.”

“So let’s go farther then.”

They do. Nothing changes.

“I’m not lying to you,” Catra insists, her voice a strange pitch of desperation. “I swear, I couldn’t get here before.”

The girl paces at the edge of the woods, though the grass beneath her doesn’t so much as flutter as she passes it over. Adora stands still in front of her, one hand to her chin, and she refrains from biting her nails like she usually does when she’s stuck, as if the Grandmaster still hovers close by, ready to scold.

“I don’t think you’re lying,” Adora says distractedly. 

Catra stops her pacing. “You don’t?”

Adora only very distantly wonders what about that surprises her so much, but she makes note to consider that later. “I don’t. I’m just thinking.”

“Care to share with the class? Or are you gonna stand there and brood in silence for another hour?”

“It’s been three minutes.” Adora frowns. “Are you being sarcastic again?”

“I— No. It’s definitely been more than three minutes.”

“Hm. Okay, so your time perception is also skewed. Was that a problem for you when you were alive too?”

“I still am, jackass.”

Adora ignores her. “There’s only three things about the conditions now that are different from last night when you tried to leave.”

“The suspense has me shaking in my goddamn boots.”

“Well. Maybe two.”

“What?”

“I was going to say one was that you’re not as aroused as you were last night, but that may not be the case.”

“I’m not _what?”_

“Aroused, physiologically animated? I don’t— Oh.” She feels an unfamiliar rush of heat up her neck when she remembers the more colloquial usage of the word. “I meant like, um, heated.” That might be just as bad. “Agitated.”

Oh, if the Grandmaster could hear her now.

Catra looks about as uncomfortable by this conversation as Adora feels. She takes it as an opportunity to continue without looking back.

“Second of all, it was dark out last night when you tried to leave.”

“So?”

“The sun wasn’t out. Astrologically speaking, not even considering our physical necessity for its heat, it is the most powerful source of authority in—”

“Okay, whatever, save me the horoscopes. What else?”

“Fine. Well.” Adora gestures to the space between them. “The third is that I’m here this time.”

Catra raises her eyebrows, slick with skepticism. “How special do you think you are, exactly?”

“I am just one of a hundred and twenty-three thousand beings on this planet. Not including the wildlife. I don’t consider myself special in any regard.”

This only makes Catra’s frown sink deeper.

“But despite that, and while I am a fan of the sun and her importance in regards to the balance of the physical world,” Adora says, “I think it’s safe to assume that I’m the relevant factor here.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

For someone that had essentially begged for Adora’s help, Catra is rather antagonistic to anything she contributes. “I’m sorry, is there anyone else here who can actually see you? Hear you? Is there anyone that knows you’re here at all? Unfortunately for both of us, I am special when it comes to you.”

Rather than the affront Adora expects, a slow, smug smile touches Catra’s mouth. Adora gets the briefest glimpse of a sharp fang.

“Okay. Go ahead, then.”

“Go ahead with what?”

“I’ve told you everything about me. It hasn’t gotten us any closer to fixing this. Let’s take a look at you now.”

Perhaps as a result of spending her entire life as a student, Adora should be used to being examined by now, but it’s very much the opposite. She’s spent two decades analyzing the world and having those analyses tested; she’s never quite had her own _self_ under a scrutinous eye.

Not to mention there really isn’t much to see.

“You’ve barely told me anything. And— I’m no one. I’ve already shared everything there is to know.”

When Catra’s eyes narrow, Adora doesn’t understand where this is about to go, but she knows she won’t like it. She hasn’t liked much of anything where this ghost is concerned.

“You didn’t just have some overbearing mom, did you?”

Not totally unlike the piercing chill when Catra passed through Adora, a deep cold settles in her chest now. And just like before, Adora doesn’t understand this feeling at all.

“I don’t have a mother. And I don’t know how that’s any of your business.”

“Come on, seriously. Who are you?” Any humor or teasing has long faded. Catra looks as if she’s only just now realized something. “For over a century your damn people have been hiding under a rock, and now, what? Your queen dies, so you just suddenly open up to the world, go wherever you want and ask for all the secrets? In the name of research?”

Adora’s fists clench at her sides, her blunt fingernails digging into her skin. 

“You’re hiding something.” Catra’s lips curl down into scowl. “I’ve felt something off about you since the second I met you.”

“And when are you going to accept the fact that that _feeling_ likely stems from the fact that you’re dead?” 

Adora doesn’t understand how they stumbled into this territory. Not that they had made much progress in the first place, but Adora knows she’s crossed this line one too many times. 

“Why are you really here?” Catra’s voice has run cold. “Don’t give me the same bullshit you fed to them.”

“I’m just here to learn.”

“Learn what?”

“Everything!” Adora exclaims, her voice creaking, unused to such a strain. Her blood pounds beneath her skin, much like it does after a sparring simulation. A voice in the back of her head is urging her to calm down, but she can hardly hear it. “My people are dying, and I’ve been sent out to learn what I can from all of the kingdoms in case one of them magically happens to know anything I can use to undo this illness. I am a dying society’s last hope for survival, so if that means playing nice with our neighbors and sharing our resources, then so be it. And you have _no_ right to criticize that.”

Startled like embers at her outburst, Catra takes a step back, but she looks at Adora less like she’s a competent foe and instead an unstable rival.

“What do you mean they’re dying?” 

Is she really trading domestic secrets with the enemy if it’s with someone who’s already dead? 

“They’re sick. Our queen was the first to die.” Adora fails in stifling a bitter laugh, suddenly nauseous and aware of how tired she is. “We have the most advanced technology in the world, and I have spent my entire life studying every inch of all known knowledge, but… we know nothing. The one time my training and our legacy could actually prove useful, instead it fails.”

Though Catra’s arms are still crossed and her demeanor unwelcoming, her grimace is less hostile. “Okay. Yeah. That sucks.”

Adora rolls her eyes, a reflex she hasn’t given into in years for how quickly she was scolded for it, but it feels strangely good now to be free to express herself. Even at the expense of this irritation.

“I would ask if it’d kill you to say sorry, but that seems a little too on the nose.”

“So why the cloak and dagger? Doesn’t seem like Sparkles and co know why you’re really here.”

“You said it yourself. Eternia has kept its gates closed to the other kingdoms for lifetimes. Stayed neutral in extralocal affairs where we could have sent aid, hoarded resources for our own rather than sharing with those in need. No leader is interested in helping the selfish neighbor. Not to mention I wouldn’t be allowed a mile within a kingdom if anyone thought I’d been in contact with a plague.”

“I mean, haven’t you?”

Adora can’t meet her gaze, and turns to the water instead. The wobbling surface glows amber beneath the setting sky. A pulse thrums deep in her chest, both subdued and everlasting. “No. I’ve never actually met them.” 

“Met who?”

“Anyone.” Adora purses her lips. “The queen, the people. What you asked me before, about my upbringing… up until three months ago, I had never met a single person except the Grandmaster. She mentioned that this might be difficult for others to understand.”

Catra’s quiet for a moment, pensive. And then: “Do _you_ understand?”

“Of course.”

“Explain it to me then.”

When Adora looks back, Catra’s stare is impenetrable. Adora chuckles wryly if only to mask the sticky discomfort she refuses to acknowledge. “I was chosen from birth for a very specific role, and it was important that I avoid distractions. I was raised in the athenaeum with a galaxy of knowledge at my fingertips. There was nothing I needed that I didn’t have access to. Socializing is necessary for developmental growth, so I trained almost daily in simulations with anthropomorphic computers and peers. I dined with the Grandmaster every morning. For all intents and purposes, I was never alone.”

Catra doesn’t say anything.

“They did what they had to do to make sure I was prepared for something like this. It was necessary,” Adora insists.

“Okay.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

Something hot burns in Adora’s chest, makes her heart pick up faster. Catra gives her a quizzical look as if Adora has just said something mad in the last second. Again, what’s the point? If she can’t be honest with even a ghost?

“It was lonely,” Adora says quietly.

Catra snorts. “Yeah, I can imagine. And here I thought I was the freakshow for being shit at making friends.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Adora bites her lip, struggling to find the right words. “I never craved people, exactly, or— or intimacy. It was lonely in the sense that… my entire life, there was always something missing. Just one thing. Not a collective experience, nothing abstract. Something specific. The Grandmaster told me it was just my thirst for knowledge, so I kept learning. I kept reading, watching, studying, until I had exhausted it all, and then I did it again, and again. But I never found it.”

Catra’s scrutinizing stare is as unreadable as ever.

“And then the queen died. And then I…” An unbidden, startling instinct to say something confuses her. Something she shouldn’t say, shouldn’t be thinking at all. _And then I met you._ “And then I came here.”

Catra doesn’t seem to notice her fumbling. “So, I’m still wrapping my head around the fact you guys actually exist. What are you, then? A spy? Was all that diplomacy ambassador shit just a cover?”

“I haven’t lied about anything,” Adora says defensively. “Okay yes, I have slightly more dire motives for coming to learn from the princesses, but the Grandmaster and I _are_ interested in establishing alliances. It was a mistake to turn our back on the rest of the world.”

“Right. It just took you guys having to be the needy one for once to realize, right?”

Adora twists with piercing glare. “That’s a rich thing for a Horde soldier to say.”

“Mm. There’s a saying about that, isn’t there? About which side of a war the indifferent party falls on?”

“At least we’ve never stolen land that wasn’t ours, at least our discipline isn’t violent and barbaric.”

“Yeah? And how would you know?” Catra raises her eyebrows. “It sounds like you’re just a hermit with a god complex. You have no idea what they do outside of your four-walled bubble.”

Adora grits her teeth, only adding to her sore jaw. “We’re done here.”

When she heads back to the castle, Adora looks behind her only once, just before entering through the looming doors. 

Catra’s nowhere to be seen, and Adora doesn’t see her again.

⚔

It’s only when she lays under the periwinkle canopy of sheets above her bed that Adora wonders, idly, if she’ll ever see Catra again.

⚔

She does. Obviously.

⚔

_A group of kids — they certainly can’t be any older than Adora herself — stumble in the front door._

_No, not a door._

_A metal hatch creaks open on rusty hinges, like one on a ship, or into a bunker maybe._

_It’s dark enough inside here that the spill of acrid light from the entryway is cruel, and it adds a fresh wave of weight to the anvil of a headache behind her eyes. It makes Adora taste her own bitterness, makes her baske in the vile, sticky heat of resentment._

_It’s overwhelming. She struggles to breathe through it._

_“What the hell are you doing back here?” she asks. “You should be halfway to the Crimson Waste by now.”_

_The youngest of them, a lanky boy, limps between the other two stronger ones, his arms slung around their shoulders, his head dangling weakly. The two look up at Adora with irritation and surprise, as if Adora somehow can’t see their pitiful state._

_But she does. She does._

_She wants to ask what they need, to rush forward and help them carry the boy, but her hands have other ideas, adjusting their trajectory at the last moment. Adora fists the collar of the girl’s dark suit (dark and red and shadowy and gray, like— just like—), and Adora forces her back to the metal-plated wall, causing her to drop the boy onto his bad foot. Adora cares but — doesn’t, she doesn’t. The other one, a tall lizardman, he swoops to compensate for the lost support, catching the boy._

_She can't help but ignore them, instead presses her face close to the girl._ _“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t toss you all right back out there."_

 _“I told you there was acid rain projected for the next few days, but_ you _wouldn’t listen.” This girl isn’t afraid of her. She pushes back at Adora’s hand.“You’re lucky Kyle managed to patch up the skiff enough to get us back here at all.”_

_“Lucky? I’m lucky?” Adora’s laugh tastes like copper. “No, if I was lucky, I’d have some at least half-witted cadets who are capable of taking basic orders.”_

_“We would’ve died out there trying to make the trip!”_

_Adora steps closer, presses her face just half a breath away from hers. “Next time, if coming back empty-handed and_ that _are your only options? Do us both a favor and don’t come back at all.”_

_Her threats mean nothing to her. “Oh back off, will you? The storm will clear up in a couple days and we’ll head out then.”_

_The split-skull migraine hits its peak crescendo as Adora slams her hand against the metal wall beside the girl’s head. Her defiant bravado claps off, and she jumps at the noise, at the coil of nauseous rage that is surely painting Adora’s face red now._

_“We don’t have a couple days,” Adora says quietly, but there is nothing gentle about it._

⚔

Adora wakes up with an aftertaste of hatred like freezer-burn caught in her throat, sweat clinging to her skin.

Dreams are not unfamiliar to her. Most often it’s just a fleeting leftover feeling from her slumber, never any action or memory she can quite place, never anything that makes sense anyway. Like the one from her first night here.

This one, Adora remembers with startling clarity. That in and of itself is enough to rattle her, and though unease follows in her footsteps the rest of her morning, she manages to press it back. Hide it, dampen it, distract it.

Thoughts of Catra, on the other hand: not so much.

Adora would like to think that she sets Catra aside from her mind entirely, that the ghost doesn’t lurk distractingly in the forefront of her consciousness as she goes about her morning affairs (as she bathes in the washroom, as she brushes her teeth, as she shapes her hair back into its tie, as she tugs on her boots, as she—).

It makes it difficult to focus, the curiosity. 

She has breakfast with Glimmer and Bow, but Angella is busy tending to a matter in the village. While they are amusing and playful, still trying to include her in their dynamic, engaging in a clear offer for amiability, Adora struggles to pay them the attention they deserve. As much as she longs to understand what friendship _is_ (beyond cortical reward processing in pleasure circuitry), she’s reluctant still. Even if Catra wasn’t overshadowing her thoughts, Adora would still be hesitant. So she thinks, at least.

When you spend twenty years isolating yourself from connections, it’s just as difficult to break that pattern as it is to _want_ to break it.

So, Catra.

Adora finds herself looking over her shoulder often — in the corridor on her way to the dining hall, around the table with a mostly untouched bowl of egg rice porridge losing its steam in front of her, in Angella’s study when she’s supposed to be studying the history of Brightmoon’s medicinal practices.

It’s not that she _misses_ her. That would be ridiculous. Adora’s never missed anyone.

But something feels wrong, off. If she didn’t know any better, she’d almost be worried she’s running a fever; something humid and uncomfortably warm runs beneath her skin, distracting though faint.

Adora excused herself from another afternoon spent with Bow and Glimmer in favor of good, old-fashioned research here, hoping that being alone might work better to center herself. Yet the vastly quiet, empty room just emphasizes the blank space.

She slumps over the thick volume text with a sigh, face squishing against the yellowing pages. It’s as if a cloud has settled around her mind, making it difficult to cling to anything for very long, to retain any information without drifting. Today is supposed to be dedicated to her own studies, the next few mostly taken up in teaching Eternian knowledge to Brightmoon’s advisors. She hardly has time to waste with distractions. The philosophy of her upbringing is clearer than ever.

“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to drool on those things.”

Her head lurches up from the book to find Catra crossing the floor towards her.

“I thought that shit was delicate.”

Adora’s buzzing skin finally begins to settle as her eyes settle on the girl, like a draft cooling her clammy skin. “You came back.”

Catra gives her a look of indifference, but the flick of her tail curling around her ankle and the outward bend of her ears gives away her sheepishness.

“Yeah. Obviously.”

There’s—

It’s not quite an echo. But something stirs under the surface of now, like this moment is a carefully weaved quilt in time, as if this sound is precisely placed between them.

It’s not an echo, but Adora hears it all the same.

Catra clears her throat and continues, “I’m still a phantom soul tethered to your selfish ass, apparently.”

The not-echo fades, and Adora sighs. “I can’t believe I was actually—” (she frowns) “—worried.”

“You, worried about me? You really do have a sense of humor.”

“Did you need something? I’m in the middle of something here.”

Catra’s hand goes to pull out the chair across from Adora, only remembering at the last second when her hand passes through its wooden back uselessly.

“Damn, I miss sitting down.” She arches her brow. “Middle of what? Taking a nap?”

“Reading ancient esoteric methods of treating Violet Fever in the hopes it’ll inspire an epiphany, actually.”

Catra peers over her shoulder. “Your book’s upside-down.”

Adora slams it shut. “What do you want?”

Rather than look at her, the ghost turns instead and begins to trail along the bookshelves, examining the titles and volumes. “I was out of line yesterday.” Her voice is almost too quiet for Adora to hear. “I don’t know anything about your life, and you were actually trying to help, so. Yeah.”

It’s hardly an apology, but it’s close enough.

 _Thank you_ doesn’t quite feel appropriate, either. Adora rises from the desk. “So I got to thinking last night, actually.”

“Don’t strain yourself.”

“Brightmoon doesn’t have much history on spirituality, and anything they do have falls more along the lines of folk tales.”

“I’m not a spirit.”

Instead of rolling her eyes, this insistence just makes her fare a smile. “It’s not like that. Not exclusively, at least. Spirituality is more a study of the immaterial soul and how that fits into the physical world.” Adora looks Catra’s form up and down with a deliberate point. “Considering you lack something of a physical form, I’d say you fit the theme.”

“Whatever. So you’re saying my only chance for understanding anything about this freakshow rests on the back of old wives tales?”

“I said _Brightmoon_ doesn’t have much.” 

A flicker of hope crosses her expression. “But… somewhere else does?”

“I’m not positive, but Plumerians have always been much more connected with the planet’s energies than any of the other kingdoms. There’s been rumors that their princess is a spiritual practitioner herself, but I don’t know how much truth there is to that.”

“Rumors? Catra snorts. “Thought you were a recluse. Didn’t know you made time for gossip.”

“I want to see you try and study the practices of all six kingdoms without ever meeting any of them.”

Catra’s eyes narrow. “Seven.”

“Oh, excuse me. I wasn't counting a factory dump of delinquents and war criminals as a kingdom.” 

“Do you really want to do this again?”

Adora’s not even sure herself why she’s taken such a strong stance against the Horde, because any of its most deplorable actions hadn’t involved Eternia at all. It doesn’t take much bias to resent such a dark empire, apparently.

“Fine. As I was saying, I’m due to head out to Plumeria next week, and I believe—”

“Next _week_?” 

“Yes. I do have other obligations here, you know, to more urgent matters than this. Do you have somewhere else to be?”

Catra’s scathing look comes off as if she’s about to snap at Adora again, but miraculously, after a moment of thought, she reins it in. 

“Okay.” Catra nods succinctly, and Adora’s pretty sure she fails at hiding her surprise at such a quick agreement. “Fine. A week until I can get some answers. I can live with that.”

Adora can’t help her smirk at the wording, and Catra lets out a sour scoff.

“Please don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Whatever. So.” Catra turns to Adora with a contemplative expression, one that feels far more familiar than it should in this room. “Not like you asked for my help, but I need to kill the time somehow. Tell me more about this magical cure you’re looking for.”

⚔

“Okay, flip.”

Adora doesn’t look up as she reaches beside her for the book Catra’s reading to turn the page.

The room’s quiet save for the faint whistle of the breeze against the window panes, the distant rush of the waterfall guarding the castle, the occasional rustle of a turning page.

Adora hasn’t turned her own in a few minutes. She’s reading about an outdated procedure for treating certain poisons, one Brightmoon stopped practicing years ago after a less invasive medicine was discovered by a healer from Salineas. Though _reading_ might be better described as going over and over the same passage without retaining much of what it says.

She understands pretty well why she was kept alone for so long if studying with other people around is always like this. She gives up the pretense of her attention not being caught elsewhere and shuts the book, looks up at the standing ghost.

“Where did you go? Last night.”

Catra, arms crossed with one fist under her chin, raises her eyebrows at Adora. “What do you mean?”

“Did you sleep or anything?”

“Oh, uh. Not really.” Catra averts her eyes back to the book as if she’s sharing something personal. “I don’t know. It was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Adora reaches across to purposely turn the book Catra’s reading several pages back, and the Horde girl gives her an exasperated look. 

“If you want my help, secrets aren’t in your best interest.”

“There’s no secret. It just… felt really long. But not, at the same time? It felt like too much time passed, but in a short period.”

“Did you do anything? Go anywhere?”

“No. I don’t know. I just felt like— like I was back home. I could _feel_ it. I could hear—” Catra cuts herself off. 

It’s strange, seeing her so inarticulate, though Adora couldn’t place why if asked. “Hear what?”

“Scorpia. My— My friend. Kind of. We were talking like we used to, before this. But every time I tried to focus on whatever the hell we were talking about, it was like waking up from a dream, and then I just wasn’t sure anymore it happened at all.”

Scorpia, one of the five elemental princesses, who Adora is assigned to meet with last. She still hasn’t been given clear instructions on how she’s supposed to accomplish that. 

Adora opens her mouth to ask about the princess, but something from the night before flits out instead. “I have weird dreams too.”

“Oh yeah?” Catra’s tail flicks across the floor. “Anything juicy?”

The echo of despair leftover from last night’s dream clings to her heart, and it’s all Adora can do to hide it from her face. She knows she’s the one who brought this up, but suddenly finds she doesn’t want to talk about it at all.

“So, you don’t feel tired or anything?” Adora asks instead.

Catra’s teasing expression closes off again. “Not like that, no. There’s something. I don’t really know how to explain it. I just feel… weak.”

“Weak how?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

If Adora recognizes Catra’s stiff jaw, it’s only because she’s coming to know this feeling well, and there’s a small comfort in knowing they’re both struggling. She nods, and then her mouth twists into a smile. “So… you do want to keep talking then?”

Catra just rolls her eyes. “You literally might as well be the last person on the face of the planet to me. I have to keep myself sane somehow.”

There’s a certain symmetry in their meeting. Adora’s life before they met, Catra’s life after.

Before now, maybe out of spite, she would’ve reminded Catra that Adora can still turn away at any time she chooses. Maybe Catra’s tethered to her, but the reverse isn’t certain.

But. The words catch in her throat. When she says nothing more, Catra looks across at her again with eyes like a windswept scatter of dust settling between them. 

Progress, maybe.

⚔

“I can’t believe I actually miss eating ration bars.”

Adora pauses, an ube-stuffed bun halfway to her mouth. Catra sits on the floor of the work kitchen, her arms hugging around her knees as she stares longingly after the steaming treat in Adora’s hands.

Adora glances down at the bun and back to her. “Do you um… want me to describe it to you?”

The ghost’s nose wrinkles. “What is it?”

“Purple yams, various milks, butter. It’s fairly sweet but um, a little nutty too? Malty might be the word. It—”

“What are you even saying?” Catra rolls up to her feet, now scrutinizing the treat. “The fuck is a yam?”

“It’s a sweet potato.”

“Sweet?”

“Sweet.”

Catra’s brow furrows, the bow of her lip pinching ever so slightly, reminding Adora of a younger child. She doesn’t know much about the Horde’s cuisine, but she’s always had a suspicion that the reason for a lack of reading material was more for a lack of topic.

“Sounds suspicious.”

Adora bites back a smile. “Does it?” 

“You’re just gonna eat something because it’s sweet? Sounds like the perfect thing to plant a poison into.”

“If you feel this strongly about ube, I’m worried to tell you about the cake.”

“The what?”

“Oh, there you are.” 

Adora looks away from Catra’s grimace to find Angella in the kitchen archway, looking almost out of place with the clutter of miscellaneous ingredients and cookware around her. Adora didn’t come to the kitchens to hide per se, but she imagined it to be more inconspicuous a place to talk to a ghost than the dining hall.

Adora stands immediately, the laugh in her throat dying as she molds back to civil composure. “Good afternoon, Queen Angella.”

She thinks she hears a sigh from behind her, but Adora doesn’t look.

Angella’s smile is warm and endeared. “We are actually well into the evening, dear. I was worried when we missed you at dinner, but by the look on your face it seems you were just too enraptured by your studies.”

Dinner? Adora has to refrain from glancing at Catra, refrain from dwelling on _enraptured._

“My apologies, your highness, I did not mean to leave you—”

Angella raises a hand, and Adora cuts herself off.

“Don’t fret, all is well. There’s something I wish to show you though, if you have a moment?”

Quickly, Adora wraps up the last of her snack in a cloth and makes a note to return to it later before making her way to Angella. Angella waits until she’s sufficiently close before turning back to the hall. Once her back is turned, Adora looks back to see Catra still sitting on the floor, and she frowns. 

_“Are you coming?”_ she mouths.

Perhaps she imagines it, considering how hurriedly Adora doesn’t wait for a response and rushes after the queen, but she swears that Catra’s slouching ears perk up just before she follows.

Angella leads them up various winding staircases, past the floor of Adora’s chambers, past the study, and then past the queen’s own quarters, until there is only one place left Adora can imagine they’re going.

They cross the threshold of balcony doors and emerge into the fresh night air. This high up, the wind is considerably colder. The walk along the gold-rimmed, narrow bridge to the Moonstone is quiet, and it isn’t until they are nearly beneath it that Angella speaks.

“There’s something special about you, isn’t there?” Angella asks after a stretch of silence.

 _Special._ She’s still alive, Adora supposes. One of the rare percentage of her people who hasn’t fallen ill, but that doesn’t feel special, only an accident. It’s not like Angella knows this anyway. Special as in there is no one else like her? The Grandmaster always said she was chosen, but Adora wonders if she was chosen for anything except to be alone.

The sudden bitterness startles her, reminds her of her dream, and Adora shakes off the gloom.

“There’s something special about all life,” Adora answers instead.

Angella hums. “Can you feel it?”

“Feel…?”

“The peace. It’s not often that I have time to spare, but I enjoy coming here when I can.”

Adora looks around, takes in the view of the Whispering Woods stretching out to the horizon, the sea of round treetops lit by the moons, the ember glow of lights emanating from the village. She looks at the luminescent runestone hanging in front of them, how she feels like she’s bathed in so much more than its opal light.

“Yes, I understand what you mean.”

She can feel Angella’s stare, no matter how gentle her eyes are. “I see that loss weighs heavy on your shoulders.”

It isn’t a question, but Adora still turns to the queen to tell her no. She opens her mouth to explain her solitude, to articulate how you cannot grieve the loss of something you never had, to say _no, of course not, no,_ but—

A gaping hole opens in her chest, a split in her ribs, Adora’s skin runs so cold that she’d think Catra had passed through her again if she couldn’t see the ghost hovering behind Angella now.

“Yes,” Adora breathes, despite all that compels her not to.

Angella tilts her head, her smile sympathetic and tender. She holds a hand to Adora’s cheek, her touch like honeydew. “You cared for your queen a great deal, didn’t you?”

She could correct her. But she doesn’t understand what it is that she’s lost instead, and she takes the offered out.

Adora nods, and Catra looks away.

⚔

By the time Adora wanders back to her chambers, it’s with a hollow pang in her stomach. She considers it might be hunger, having missed dinner, but the idea of filling the hole in her gut with something physical and aromatic just turns the feeling to nausea.

“Are you okay?” Catra asks.

She almost forgot she’s here. A shiver runs down the back of her neck, despite being back in the warmth of the castle, and Adora tightens her jacker more securely around her. She doesn’t manage to compose her rapidly beating heart, but she does school her expression before she turns around.

“Yes.” She keeps her tone level, cool. “Thank you, but I am fine. It is getting late, actually, so if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like to—”

“You don’t have don’t have to talk like that, you know. It’s just me.”

“Like what?”

“All proper and formal, or whatever.” Catra makes a wave gesture over Adora. “How you talk to everyone else.”

“This is just how I talk. It makes for optimal communication.”

“It’s not how you talk to me.”

The idea gives her a headache as much as it feels like relief, like giving into something inevitable. 

Adora runs her hands back through her hair, detangling it from its tie as she turns away. “I’m just not feeling well right now.”

Though she can’t hear Catra’s footsteps, she’s starting to become attuned to the trajectory of her presence, can feel her walk around back into Adora’s line of sight.

“Like, sick? How sure are you that you didn’t catch whatever it is your people have?”

“No. I mean yes, I’m sure. This is all just a lot to process.”

“What is?”

Adora squeezes her eyes shut, takes a steady breath. “Just… this. Being around people, I think.”

“Oh. Yeah. Guess I’d be socially awkward too.”

She frowns at that. “I’m not awkward.”

“I heard you tell Sparkles this morning that she has really nice nostrils.”

“What? She does. You’d be surprised how much the shape of one’s nasal cavity helps to prevent— wait. Are you spying on me?”

Catra just rolls her eyes, crossing her arms in a manner that is beginning to seem traditional for her. Fatal, elegant fingers curling over the elbow of a dark sleeve, claws so sharp their point would glint in the light if the light caught on her at all.

Adora stares. How can she be there, and not? How can Adora watch the rise and fall of Catra’s chest in the same way she watches the trees breathe with the wind, and how can one be less real than the other? 

Here’s the thing about being born alone: she adopted that solitude like a layer of her own skin. As much as Adora has ever wished or wondered to be around others, she still finds herself only craving the old, familiar ways. She misses the closed doors, the comfort of being away from curious eyes and well-meant words. 

How can Adora, for the first time since she’s come here, not mind this ghost to stay?

The bedroom door shut behind her, Adora has her wish. She’s hidden from the rest of the castle, in the privacy of her room, but somehow, with Catra here now, it still feels enough. The same comfort of being alone, without it.

What does that mean for them? What are the chances that Catra isn’t real at all, and that’s why Adora can feel herself let her guard down so well around her?

“Adora?”

She looks so real, Adora could almost touch her.

Adora blinks the haze away, running her stray hair away from her face. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

“I know it’s probably not my place, but… what was that up there? With the stone.”

“Each runestone has certain properties relevant to the lineage of its kingdom,” Adora explains tiredly. “It’s like a crystal ball into their ancestry. Right now, Glimmer and Angella share their bond with the stone, and—”

“Listen, I love how you’re a walking encyclopedia and everything, it’s cute, but I’m talking about what you said. You told me you never even met your queen.”

A fresh shiver runs down Adora's arms, a breeze of goosebumps. “I know.”

“Why did Sparkle Queen ask you about how you lost her then?”

This feels like a mistake, if only because Adora doesn’t understand where she’s going with it. “As I was saying, Angella and Glimmer share a bond with the stone. The stone is a power source for them, sort of. Every stone brings something different — all the princesses have different abilities — but what is also unique to the moonstone is something more… intuitional.”

Catra’s eyebrows screw into a frown. “Like they’re psychic? And you’re saying they don’t know anything about your spiritual mumbo jumbo?

Adora sighs. “Not psychic. They have a powerful intuition and empathy, and they are incredibly perceptive. It’s an instinct they draw from the stone.”

“Uh-huh. How perceptive can they really be if their asses can’t tell I’m here, then?”

Adora doesn’t voice aloud that this is an inkling fear she’s been mulling over this last hour. She sits on the edge of her bed and stares at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“For someone who studied their life away, you don’t know a whole lot.” Despite the challenging words, Catra says this all softly, like this is becoming something of an inside joke for them. Adora doesn’t laugh.

Catra’s ears begin to droop close to her head. Adora expects her to leave — she hasn’t stuck around through the night the last two days — but to her surprise, she watches from her peripheral as the ghost curls herself down to sit cross-legged on the floor. Her knees pulled up slightly, elbows draped across them, she looks like they’ve done this all their lives.

Adora doesn’t have a life. If she does, it’s not hers anyway.

“Hey.” 

She realizes she’s been staring at the loose way Catra’s hands dangle between her legs, and she blinks up to meet Catra’s eyes.

“You can talk to me, you know.” Catra looks as genuine as Adora imagines she’s capable of. Her mouth slants into a wry smile. “I mean, who am I gonna tell?”

Something cold burns behind her eyes. Imagined or not, Adora owes her honesty at least. “How do I know you’re real?”

It’s not so much a question as it is a confession.

“What?” This clearly isn’t what Catra was expecting her to say, because her tail flits anxiously underneath herself, and she sits up straighter. “I thought we already went over this.”

“I want you to be real. I don’t know if that’s worth anything, but I do. At the same time, I know all too well that wanting something has never accomplished anything.”

Catra pulls herself forward until she’s crouched in front of her. “Okay, listen to me. This is not all in your head. I don’t know what happened to me, and I— I don’t know why you’re the only one who can see me. I’m taking a leap of faith here that you didn’t curse my ass, because I think if there’s anyone who can help me, it’s you. I can’t convince you I’m real, but I can trust there’s a reason you and I are stuck together like this. All I’m asking is for you to do the same.”

Through all the assurance, Adora sees a desperate sort of fear in Catra’s eyes, a plea for something so much greater than trust. She can’t help but wonder how many times Catra has had to fight to prove her worth, how many times she’s had to give a good enough reason to not be discarded.

If nothing else is real or true, Adora does know she wants to dissuade that fear. 

“I won’t leave you,” she promises instead. Because what else can she do?

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“I know. That’s exactly why I won’t.”


	3. if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don’t know how to not write long chapters i apologize in advance

_“She needs more time.”_

_Adora presses herself flat against the ribbed steel wall, struggling to crane her neck so she can hear but still remain hidden._

_“It’s been weeks,” a man snaps, his voice rippling like gravel. “You said you had her under control.”_

_“I do,” a woman says. “But we both knew there would be a transition period first.”_

_“Coddling a liability was not the plan we discussed.”_

_“That… is more complicated than we anticipated. Apparently, she holds a grudge now.”_

_“Then dispose of her. I won’t waste anymore of our resources to humor that idiot girl’s delusions.”_

_The woman pauses, and the tension of the air is thick enough that Adora can feel it even out here in the hall._

_“We are already down one Force Captain,” the woman answers slowly, deliberately, like this turn in conversation is something she’d been planning for all along. “What greater waste of resources is there than disposing of a life that we can still use?”_

_She hears the scuffling of a guard down the hall, and Adora runs._

⚔

Adora nearly cries out into the dark for someone when she shoots awake, jumping up in her bed.

She doesn’t need to. Catra stands by the window, somehow both illuminated by the shine of the moon and entirely unprocessed by it. At Adora’s startle, Catra turns immediately towards her and is at the edge of the bed in half a moment.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Too tired to answer, too delirious to realize she’s not still dreaming, Adora falls back into the pillows.

“They need me,” she mumbles. “They still need me.”

She doesn’t hear Catra’s response.

⚔

“Your healers have been using electromyography for years, you said?” one of the advisors asks. 

Master Isaiah, head of the aesculapian guild. She only recognizes him so easily among the conference of advisors because his family name runs long into Brightmoon’s medicinal histories, and she’s already met him twice before this meeting simply for how much time she spends in his guild’s records archive. 

Eternia first developed their first EMG machine well over a century ago, but Adora thinks it might be in poor taste to point that out — given how recently it was that Dryll only just finished drawing schematics for such a machine — so she nods. “Yes.”

He turns down to his sheet of notes, the corners of his mouth bent impossibly low, nearly disappearing into his crimped, white beard. “And electroneuronography?”

Less than a century, but not by much. “That’s correct.”

“You see, I only ask because there’s been some… unrest, Marquess. Among the younger apprentices.”

“Regarding?”

His eyes squint at her over the rims of his thin reading glasses, and he touches his thumb to his chin thoughtfully. “They’re a bit confused as to why someone of your high expertise would spend so much time reading over rudimentary, basic procedures.”

Standing deathly still at the front of the cabinet room in front of Brightmoon’s most esteemed, Adora’s stomach sinks, slow and brutal, like flesh scraping against sandpaper. She’s been careful. Of course she spends more time studying medicinal history, it’s the whole freaking point she’s here. But he can’t know that, none of them can. Is that what he’s getting at? She wasn’t careful enough? His students are narrowing an accusatory eye at her motives?

“You spend a considerable amount of time learning practices that first-years will have already mastered by their early teens, is all. Outdated ones at that. You only learned this week the proper preparation of root rot for staunching bleeding, is that correct? Being from such an _advanced_ society as yours, they’re only curious why it’s caught your interest.”

It’s a testament to her endurance training that Adora can keep such a neutral face while alarms are rattling in her head. Think. _Think._ What else could they have noticed about the books she’s been reading, the practices? What excuse can she use to— 

“He’s bluffing, you know.”

Her eyes flit to the ghost in the doorway, who somehow makes hovering in limbo look elegantly cool. Adora refrains from glaring — they had agreed that Catra would keep herself occupied elsewhere while Adora was in important meetings like this one — but Adora twitches her eyebrows in a way she can only hope coneys her question, _how can you tell?_

Catra crosses her arms smugly, wandering behind the chair of the advisor and peering over his shoulder. “He’s making shit up to make you nervous. There’s no _unrest_ with a bunch of kids about what you spend your free time geeking out over. Sparkle Queen would be the first to know if anyone was suspicious of you, or someone else in the room from one of the other guilds would be speaking up about the same thing. Didn’t you like, only just learn how to wink yesterday? I don’t see anyone challenging your communication skills.”

So Adora didn’t know that winking was supposed to only be done with one eye, big deal. She really wishes everyone would stop making a fuss about that.

But mostly, she wants to ask what good reason he would have to be lying. Either telekinesis can be added to the list of her strange qualities, or Catra is as good at reading people as she claims.

“He doesn’t trust you. Dude doesn’t even like you. My guess? He’s pissy about having to sit here learning from a kid, and he’s trying to flex his big-boy balls.”

Gross, Adora thinks. And then, _I’m not a—_

“You’re not a kid, yeah, whatever. To his old ass, you might as well be.”

The fact that Adora can see the barest peak of a smile on the man’s mouth, like he’s pleased with how the stretch of silence could mean he’s left Adora speechless (and not that she’s conferring with the Horde soldier ghost following her around), seems to give some credit to Catra’s theory.

Adora purses her lips. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s taken a risk on Catra’s word. 

“In Eternia, we never used fungal diseases to induce blood clots,” Adora says. “We preferred a cleaner method with less risk that I’d be happy to teach you. And if you’re struggling to explain to your students the importance that history plays in understanding modern science, it would be my pleasure to properly teach them on your behalf.”

When the advisor’s frown recedes back into his beard, his confident posture slouching into his seat, Adora’s not sure whose smile is more smug: hers or Catra’s. Probably the latter, all things considered.

She turns back to the rest of the room. “Any other questions?”

⚔

When the meeting ends, and everyone else is filtered out of the cabinet already, Adora is left alone tidying up the room.

Mostly alone.

“I’m pretty sure there are servants that’ll do that for you.”

Adora looks up at the ghost and then back down at the papers she’s stacking. “Oh. Yes, probably.”

A moment passes. “You’re still doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Cleaning.”

Okay, yes, she’s wiping down the chalkboard, but only because it had been immaculate when she first arrived, and she’s determined to leave the room exactly as she found it, no faded traces of her sketches and scrawl to be seen.

Adora shrugs. “I like doing it. I’m used to doing most things myself.”

“I thought you were royalty.”

“Really more like nominated solitude.”

“So, you did everything all by yourself?”

“Yes.” Adora pauses, then gives a lenient nod. “I mean I can’t cook. All my food was delivered. But otherwise I was self-sufficient. What did you think I lived like?”

“I don’t know, robots carrying out all your bidding or something.”

Adora can’t help the snort that escapes her, and once it does, she’s thankful to have her back turned to Catra because she can feel her cheeks warming.

“What?” the ghost says, offended. “You’re always talking about computers and advanced tech. Excuse me for assuming you had robots doing your laundry.”

Adora does look over her shoulder for this one. “My laundry? That’s what you think about?”

“Shut up.”

Smiling, Adora wipes her chalky hands on a cloth. “Think less robotics and more… intelligent systems.”

“Whatever. Are you done for the day now? You said we could work on me when you were finished.”

Adora wants to make some kind of remark about the eager impatience in her tone, but she’s not entirely sure how she’d word it nor if it would be crossing a boundary between them. They’re not _friends_ really, Adora still doesn’t know what that is. They’re something, but maybe it ends at _stuck together_.

Because that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? Adora doesn’t know what a friend _is_. She can address figures of authority and carry out class etiquette like a proper scholar, but none of the simulations or training prepared her for small-talk and banter with a dead person.

So instead, she only says, “Thank you for before, by the way. With Master Isaiah. He caught me off guard a little bit there.”

Rather than just accept the gratitude, Catra looks at her with an expression that’s difficult to read. “You’re smart, Adora, I’ll give you that. But jackasses like that are everywhere, and out here? Nobody’s gonna give you the time it takes to learn how to spot a liar, and none of your cute linguistic tricks or weird psychological games will help you with that.”

“I mean. There are bodily and facial clues to indicate when someone’s lying. Really Catra, there is a science to this.”

“And there’s a difference between being lied to and being played.”

“Let me guess. Spoken like a true liar?”

Catra doesn’t laugh or smile. “Spoken like someone who’s been lied to their whole life. Are we going or what?”

Dammit, Adora thinks. This is exactly why she’s not meant for social interactions.

⚔

Catra keels over and braces herself on her knees, panting. “Tell me again,” she says between breaths, “why having me — sprint all over the place — is s’pose to tell us anything.”

Drills, training, and experiments, on the other hand? This is what Adora was born for. Literally. 

“We should collect as much data as we can before going to Plumeria. And you should be grateful; the fact you feel like you’re out of breath right now means you have breath to lose.” When Catra just stares at her, Adora scratches the back of her head. “You know, like you still have breath to lose. You still have some connection to your physical body. You might not be dead.”

“I’m not dead. And— I’m not out of breath, I’m just fucking _tired._ ”

“Exactly!” Adora gives her brightest, most encouraging smile. “Prove it then. Run to the far edge of the village and back. I’ll count this time.”

Catra lets out a groan that sounds halfway like a whine, but soon she takes off again, and Adora is left in the sunshine of the field.

She’s just reached forty-one seconds in her head before she hears a shout from the castle. Turning to the sound, she sees Glimmer and Bow half-jogging half-stumbling their way down the grassy hill to where Adora has been experimenting with Catra for the last hour.

“You really are a hard girl to find,” Glimmer huffs, brushing down her cloak. “I swear you get around this place sneakier than I do. What the hell’s your secret?”

“I uh, have a ghost that watches on the lookout for me.”

They both stare at her for a beat before laughing.

“You’re funny,” Bow says. “We were just about to hit the waterslide over the mountain and wanted to check if you’d come. It’s a rare day the skies are this clear, so we head up there any chance we get.”

“Hit the... what?”

“Waterslide. It’s like, this stream that comes down from a reservoir on the mountain. Very rocky and dangerously fun.”

“Actually, um.” Adora risks a glance over her shoulder to the village entrance for Catra, but sees nothing. She really should go with them, considering how little time she’s spent connecting with the princess, but there’s a thrum of guilt at leaving Catra behind without telling her. 

“It’s alright. I don’t want to intrude on your… thing.”

“Oh shut up, you’re not intruding on anything. We’re literally inviting you.” Glimmer pulls on Adora’s hand back in the direction they came from. “You’ve been working nonstop for the last five days since you’ve been here. Didn’t they ever teach you to take a break up there?”

No, they didn’t.

Adora just about digs her heels into the dirt. “I-I don’t know, I don’t own any swimwear and—”

“What you’re wearing now is fine! The more padding the better, honestly.” 

“But—”

“Okay, I know he worded it like an offer, but we’re not actually taking no for an answer.”

“No, we will take it, but we will be extremely sad.”

Adora fares one last look back down the hill. It really is an unfairly long village, because Catra still is nowhere to be seen. It’s a little rude, Adora knows, but… Catra can just find her later, right?

She sags into the two friends pushing and allows herself to be urged away. “Alright, maybe just for a little bit.”

“Yes! This is gonna be so much fun.” 

“This slide is gonna be the rush of your goddamn life, Marquess.”

Adora forces a smile that she can only hope conveys something resemblant of enthusiasm.

Their cheers of glee carry over the hillside like birdsong, and Adora finds herself a little less tense to its melody.

⚔

Hair plastered to her neck from the springwater fresh from the mountainside, chest rising and falling from the exertion of carrying herself back up the steep slope for the third time, Adora is _beaming_.

“I don’t think this is going to work as well as you two think it will,” Adora says through a nervous laugh as she squishes between the two of them. With Bow behind her and Glimmer in front, they’ve crowded onto a sturdy disk of bark from a nearby tree in an attempt to repurpose it as some sort of sled.

“There’s no room for your pessimism here.”

Adora can feel the vibration of Bow’s laugh from behind her. “Is everybody ready?”

It was one thing to go sliding down the slippery waterslide just on her own, clothes and boots and all, and it’s quite another to risk it on a questionable piece of wood with two other people clinging to it for dear life.

“Uh.” Adora stretches her neck to peak around Glimmer’s shoulder at the cliff-dive before them. “I really think we should maybe reconsid—”

“Fuck yeah we’re ready!” is all the warning Glimmer gives before kicking them off from the rocks and sending them plummeting down the mountainside. 

The spray of the water spritzing up from their perilous speed combined with the rush of wind streaking across her face, it’s a dive of thrill that bottoms Adora’s stomach out completely. Her scream is stolen by the mountain as they race away, and in the moment of flying suspension when it feels like this will last forever, the slope already begins to level out, and they come to a skidding stop at the bottom, Bow having kicked his foot into the dirt.

The disk of bark chipped off at the edges from the ride down, but it kept intact well. The three of them stumble off of it laughing, and Adora’s legs feel like jelly back on solid ground, her head swimming with dizzy delight. She’s having fun she realizes, and the thought is so nonchalant — of course she is, what else would this be? — that it only makes her heart swell bigger.

Glimmer trips into Bow’s side, and he loops an arm around her waist to steady her. “I really didn’t know if we’d survive that one, but holy shit, let’s go again.”

He squeezes her hip. “Maybe let’s not test our luck.”

“What the _fuck_ did you do?”

The strangled shout has Adora turning sharply, her heart already in her throat at the familiar voice, to find Catra scrambling up the path to where the three of them stand, the backdrop of the small kingdom like a miniature model of itself behind her. She’s gasping for air far more violently than before, this time actually seeming to be desperate for _air_ and not energy. Still enthralled by the adrenaline, Adora forgets to keep up the pretense of hiding her gawking. But as Catra quickly rushes up closer, Adora can see the damp fear in her face, the ragged eyes, the near-sobbing breaths.

She opens her mouth to explain, to point to Glimmer and Bow, but— they’re still here, and— 

“Screw luck, we have skill on our side. First one to make it to the top gets to ride in front this time.”

Catra collapses to her hands and knees, still heaving for breath. “You said— You said you wouldn’t leave me.”

“I-I—”

“Adora! You coming?”

She spins back around, and playing two dimensions of reality that are both moving too fast is giving her whiplash. Bow and Glimmer beckon her to come back up again with them, oblivious to her panic.

“I’ll catch up with you guys. I uh, I need a minute to catch my breath,” she lies, forcing her voice steady.

“You sure?”

Catra’s wheezing breaths wracked with fear is digging under Adora’s skin, and she does her best to convincingly assure them both to go ahead.

Once they’re gone and sufficiently out of earshot, Adora drops to her knees in front of Catra. She reflexively reaches out for her, gets so far as her fingertips skimming through the ghost’s shoulders, before the slicing cold reminds her.

This just makes her chest clench harsher. She doesn’t know how to console her, what to do, what to say.

When Catra finally looks back up to her, her eyes are glossy with barely unshed tears, and her entire frame is still shaking. “Don’t you _ever_ leave me again. You can’t— you can’t go somewhere without— without telling me—”

“Catra, what happened?” Though she’s never craved the physical touch of any one person, Adora wishes now more than ever that she could offer something more comforting than just words. Not that she’s skilled enough with those words in the first place.

Catra shakes her head again, chin falling to her chest. “Like before, when I tried to leave. It was so— so fucking _hot_ , I didn’t think— I didn’t know where you’d gone, and nowhere was enough— you were too far away, I thought it was _over._ ”

“I’m sorry,” Adora tries again, spending her tension by digging her fingers into the ground beneath her palms, curling into the wet soil. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Just go.” She doesn’t look up. “Go back up there before they come back for you.”

“Catra.”

“Just fucking _go_!” Catra lurches for Adora, and when that same drench of ice-cold floods through them both like a monsoon, it sends Adora scrambling back over the ground to escape it. “Go, go fuck off with your friends, just—”

Catra doesn’t finish, and Adora can only imagine what she wants to say. Because what is there to say? How do you tell someone you apparently can’t live without to go?

Adora understands better than she wants to. Or maybe she’s just used to being on this side of such an opposition.

Seeing Catra so vulnerable and afraid still hurts more than she expected it would.

Stomach wrought with guilt and throat thick with anxiety, Adora’s own skin burns just watching her, and she doesn’t have much of a taste to go back up the mountain. 

She stands. “Come on. Let’s go back.”

Adora can’t tell if the look Catra gives her is relief or frustration, but she’s not sure it matters. Either way, it ends with Catra recovering a slippery hold on her breathing and shakily rising to her feet.

She doesn’t signal to Bow and Glimmer that she’s leaving. The walk back is much more silent than the walk up.

⚔

They don’t talk about it.

Adora doesn’t really know what to say, and there’s only so many times she can apologize for something that’s not entirely her fault. That consolation does little for her own guilt, and so she imagines it doesn’t mean much to Catra, either.

Catra just doesn’t seem to want to talk to her at all. 

So they don’t.

⚔

_Adora stares up at the ceiling._

_Metal plates above her, metal plates around her, is this a room or a cage?_

_The bile-yellow lights flicker above her, their buzzing erratic and staccato. Though it pulls tight at her eyes to stare directly at it for so long, she can’t look away._

_The hatch door swings open on loud, screeching hinges._

_Adora doesn’t look._

_“You missed dinner,” a girl says. The same one from the group of three that Adora chastised. “Again.”_

_She hears the tap of metal against metal, and inexplicably, she just wants to cry._

_“You ever stop to think it’s because I’m tired of seeing your ugly face?” she says back._

_A low chuckle. “Nah. Think you just like having me alone like this.”_

_Adora doesn’t laugh._

_When she says nothing more, the girl eventually takes her leave, the door much louder when it creaks shut than when it opened. Adora rolls over onto her side, straining to lift her neck. On the metal box beside her bed, on top of crumpled papers and a shard of broken glass, a metal tray sits crooked. There’s a plate of something brown on it, unnaturally perfect in its cuboid shape._

_She does cry._

⚔

When Adora wakes with tears like ice in her eyes, Catra is not here to console her this time.

⚔

“I’ll be back in a week or so,” Adora says, adjusting the straps of her pack. “Before I head up to the Kingdom of Snows.”

Glimmer laughs. “Oh, you better be.”

Bow rounds about to behind Adora to help her with a buckle she struggles to reach. “I still have to take you to my dads’ library. They’ll kill me if I don’t introduce them to a First One’s ambassador.”

Glimmer gives a squeak of a grunt, and Bow is quick to correct himself.

“Shoot, sorry. Eternian ambassador.”

This grated on her nerves when she first came, but from someone as compassionate and kind as Bow, it just makes her smile now.

Leaving is bittersweet, for a handful of reasons. The most glaring is how the fact that she has to move on at all is because she didn’t find what she was looking for among Brightmoon’s materials. She even spent hours studying alongside Glimmer and Angella, both together and individually, and Adora doesn’t feel much closer to her goal at all. 

The second reason is that Adora has actually grown fond of the two reckless friends. They’re odd and overly affectionate, but any time spent with them is always an adventure. It was something Adora was both terrified of having and terrified of _wanting_ , and the relieving outcome is that having a friend can be a much simpler affair than she’d imagined. Having two is a breeze, with the right people.

The third reason hovers just a few meters away, silent, staring into the woods.

As predicted, Adora hadn’t found much of anything about spirits, ghosts, or the bend of reality in Brightmoon’s books. At a certain point, it just became about her own research and waiting for Plumeria to continue Catra’s.

Angella sweeps across the floor to bid her goodbye next, but it's an easier occasion than the bone-crushing hugs she’d endured from Bow and Glimmer. The queen is either not a physically touchy person or she just recognizes that Adora isn’t, but regardless she only gives an exceptionally faint bow and a warm smile. 

“It’s a pleasure to have you, Adora. Are you sure you won’t take one of our horses? It will shorten your trip by a few hours.”

She hesitates. Having a companion that can’t exactly sit on a horse doesn’t make well for travelling accommodations. “That’s alright, I enjoy the time to think, but thank you.”

Given how incompetent Adora is in meeting new people, she fares pretty well in saying goodbye. She has little to no experience in either, and she’s not entirely sure which prepares her for which. 

Saying goodbye is simple. Adora thought it would be harder. Everything she’s ever read talks about how inherently sentimental Etherians are born to be, and any personal memoir she’s ever read shows just how much weight people put on goodbyes. Adora likes Brightmoon, and she understands her own mortality. She knows a plan to come back isn't guaranteed. 

Even still. Saying goodbye doesn’t bother her. She wonders if it’s supposed to.

⚔

“Why are you going back?”

Adora nearly starts at the question. It’s not that she forgot Catra was there, but it’s the first thing she’s said all day, and they’ve been travelling already for at least an hour. Not to mention how little Catra’s cared for conversation the last few days at all.

Catra must take her pause for confusion, because she elaborates. “You told Sparkles you’ll be back soon. Don’t you have to get home eventually?”

“Eventually, yes. But we decided Brightmoon would be my temporary home station. If I do end up finding anything worthwhile, Eternia is too far away to rely on a quick return. We set Brightmoon up with one of our transmitters so I can report back quicker.”

Catra nods, either thoughtful or indifferent, Adora can’t tell.

“And when you say _we_ , you mean your… Grandmaster?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she doing, anyway? While you’re out here doing all the legwork.”

Maybe Catra is just the kind of person to find a sour perspective on most things, but Adora wonders when she started talking like she’s on her side. It’s touching, in the way that the early morning fog glazes soothingly over her skin as they travel, in how Adora knows it’ll all dry off as soon as they’re out of the woods. 

“Caring for the sick,” Adora answers. “Maintaining order. She’s far more fit to lead than I am, and she’s been in too much contact with them already, so there’d be too much risk for spreading the disease if she left, anyway.”

“You know you still haven’t told me what this disease is.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here.”

Catra doesn’t seem to appreciate Adora’s attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor. Adora doesn’t really either.

“It starts with memory loss,” Adora says thickly. Just because she hasn’t met them personally doesn’t change how heavily the worry sits in her stomach. “Normal things at first. Arrangements to see someone, family recipes, deadlines. Then it’s forgetting to refill the woodstove, to dress themselves, to eat. And then, eventually, they forget to wake up at all.”

It takes Adora a moment to realize Catra’s stopped walking. Adora looks back, and her own footsteps slow to a stop, and then she blinks. This part of the woods is dark, but she swears there’s a glow to Catra’s silhouette. Her eyes, the red metal plate adorning her face, the blood of the sigil on her clothes — they are vibrant even in shadow.

“What do you mean they don’t wake up?” The wavering dip of her tone makes it sound like she has a personal stake in this alongside Adora. “Like they die in their sleep?”

“Some of them. Not right away. Mortality rate is about six percent. Most of them are still asleep.” She pauses, remembers the word the Grandmaster has been encouraging her to use, pretends that she believes it will help to lighten her worry. “Comatose. They’re comatose.”

It’s not particularly hot today, especially under the canopy of the woods, but there’s a breeze that washes her skin with a refreshing cool. Despite the morbid topic, Adora can feel herself relax. Maybe the glow of Catra’s form is imagined, but the strange comfort that emanates isn’t.

“I’m sorry, for whatever it’s worth.”

Those words, coming from Catra, work against the grain of everything Adora thinks she knows about the Horde girl. Hearing it feels as incompatible with reality as the elusive delirium of trying to hold onto a dream when it’s already slipping away.

Catra looks even more surprised by her words than Adora is.

Everything about this moment feels as familiar as it does foreign. Adora savors it like the pastries Bow and Glimmer are so fond of, even if she’s not sure why she does it.

“I’m sorry too.”

For leaving her behind to burn before? For the fact she might be dead? For how she might not be, and Adora might fail her anyway?

Adding one person to the list of lives that are relying on her shouldn’t have as much of an effect as it does. 

“I think maybe there’s some truth to what you said the other day,” Adora adds.

They continue walking, and Catra moves closer in step with Adora beside her than before. “About what?”

“That there’s a reason you’re stuck with me.”

“Oh. What reason’s that?”

“I have no idea.” Adora laughs unexpectedly. “But I’m starting to get the feeling that…” 

_Need_ feels too strong.

“...that I could probably use you as much as you could use me.”

“I’ve never had a partner.” 

“No?”

Catra shakes her head. “I mean, not in a long time at least. There was one, but I don’t have the best track record of working with other people. Figure you deserve a heads-up on that.”

Adora gives a sidelong smile just as they step out from the undergrowth, step into the cream of the sunlight. “Sounds like we’re both deficient in that regard then.”

“So, we’re either going to understand each other perfectly and make for an all-star team, or we’ll be chaos walking. Not sure there’s room for much in between.”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Even under the sun, the air still soothes her skin like mist. Maybe the fog hasn’t faded yet after all.

⚔

“Oh _Adora_!”

This is all the warning she gets before being attacked.

For such a lithe woman, the princess of Plumeria packs quite the punch with such a dangerously constricted hug. She doesn’t lift Adora off of her feet or anything, but her arms are like sturdy branches caving in her chest, and Adora’s returning greeting is more of a wheeze collapsing from her mouth than anything.

Catra’s laughing. Hands around her middle, eyes squinted shut, _laughing._

Adora can only laugh in turn, and then Perfuma is laughing with glee, and.

⚔

“And this is the old mill where we used to cook our brews,” Perfuma explains over her shoulder. “It’s been empty for years, ever since we realized that we’d have more control of the humidity levels if we kept our workshop at the top of the hill. This close to the ponds, it’s impossible to keep anything really dry.”

As if to punctuate Perfuma’s point, Adora wipes a slick sheet of sweat from her forehead. Perfuma, regaled in her own thin, swaying sundress and each breeze catching perfectly beneath the fabric, fares far better than Adora right now, not a drop on her luminant skin anywhere. She’s only one step away from looking as comfortable in the thick heat as Catra is, so. Any joke Adora would make about wishing to be the ghost here seems null.

“There really isn’t much left here,” Perfuma says, and she’s right. The retired lab is made up of only shelves with old ceramic pots and bowls, angled glassware stained and muddied from age. “But you said to leave no stone unturned, so here we are. Plenty of history here, but not much else I’m afraid. I’m the only one who comes here anymore.”

“That’s alright. Did you spend much time here as a child?”

Perfuma’s eyes light up. “Oh yes. My mother spent most of her time here, and I was always quick behind her. She used to have me mixing dragon’s blood for hours just as an excuse to keep me down here with her,” she says with a laugh.

“Dragons?” Catra asks. She’d been strolling down the length of the old tavern, her tail drifting lazily along behind her as she regarded the space, but now she shoots Adora a skeptical glance.

“Not actually, it’s just resin from a tree,” Adora answers before remembering not to, and it’s only at the strained look Catra gives her that she realizes how she’s slipped.

Miraculously, Perfuma must not notice anything, because she only gives Adora a rather curious smile as she leads them back out into the sunshine. “That’s right, and it also doesn’t need to be prepared at all. I can’t tell you how much she let me waste just to let me feel like I was being useful.”

Adora smiles in return, but— her thoughts flicker. She can’t help but wonder how many resources would be considered wasted on her life if she’s been put all this way only to fail.

A pinprick of ice passing through her fingertips is what makes Adora realizes she’s tuned herself out again. Catra’s standing beside her, and the ghost nods at the princess that’s already following the path up the hill without her, chattering away still.

She clears her head and is quick to catch back up with her, to resume her position, and the only echo of thoughts are now just lingering on the tingle in her fingers.

“...and so it’s really of no value to anyone in the town,” Perfuma is saying. “There’s been discussions for years about what to use it for instead, but a part of me can’t bear to let it go. I’ve tried explaining it to the elders, and normally they trust my intuition on this, but they think I’m just being sentimental. Which, I absolutely am, I just don’t know when sentiment became something to scorn at.”

Perfuma blinks like something has just occurred to her. She turns to Adora abruptly, and her eyes are narrowed with scrutinizing interest under the blaze of the sun.

“You’re _very_ easy to talk to. Have you always been this way?”

Adora wouldn’t really know. “Thank you. I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

Catra snorts. “By fucking who?”

“You’re quite attracting too, actually. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before.”

The unholy sound that comes from Catra this time is still somewhat of a snort, but more strangled, and Adora thinks she might feel something similar. Blinking rapidly as if it might urge away the warmth creeping around her cheeks, Adora forces a laugh.

“Um, thank you, your— your majesty.” 

Perfuma just looks even more amused than before, and she takes off again up the path. “No, Adora. _Attracting._ I mean the energies that are drawn to you. Do you feel them?”

This is the second time a royal leader has asked if Adora can feel something. She can’t help but shoot another glance at Catra walking beside them.

“There!” Perfuma’s grin is magnificent. “ _That_. You must be able to feel what you’re doing.”

Something cold, not exactly panic but a kinder friend of it maybe, sprouts behind Adora’s ribs. She pointedly avoids looking at Catra again, but the ghost is animated.

“Holy shit. Can she tell I’m here?”

Adora just continues to stare ahead of them, at a loss for words, while Catra begins waving her hands in front of the princess’s face, shouts in her ear, swipes an arm through her head, stumbling through her body — all for nothing.

“What am I doing?” Adora asks carefully.

“You’re opening a great deal. Already open, maybe.”

They’re on the edge of the townsquare now, and the princess stops. When Perfuma takes a step towards her with a hand outstretched, Adora freezes, but the princess doesn’t touch her. Her palm hovers just short of Adora’s face, her fingers bending as she runs her hand slowly around and over Adora’s face, but never actually making contact. 

Perfuma closes her eyes, but Adora doesn’t feel anything except the warmth radiating from her skin.

Perhaps out of a desire to test something, maybe just an instinct she can’t resist, Adora looks to Catra again through Perfuma’s fingers. She expects the girl to look entertained, or maybe annoyed, at the very least confused. Instead, she just looks afraid, but… hopeful. Is both an option?

When Catra’s eyes meet hers, Perfuma lets out a contented sigh. “Your energy is not like ours. You run much faster than the rest of us. I see now.”

“See what?”

Perfuma opens her eyes, drops her hand, and smiles like they’ve just finished a talk about the weather. “I had a feeling you were going to be special.”

This déjà-vu is a little too on the nose for her. “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you mean.”

Perfuma hums, smiles like she’s letting Adora in on a secret. She all but skips up to the gnarly tree sprouting from the center of the town square, looking as free as a young child with her sun-drenched hair and flowing dress both rippling in the air. She presses her hand up over the glossy surface of the runestone like one might touch the face of a child. It had been a creamy pink before, but now with her palm pressed against it, the stone begins to glow a spring-green hue, pulsating faintly like a heartbeat.

“I love the Heart-Blossom,” she says. “It’s one of my favorite things about Plumeria.”

Adora wracks her brain for anything of note she can remember about the runestone as she follows slowly behind. “I read that some say whatever fragrance it gives off is specific to any individual who smells it.”

“Ah, yes and no. I can tell you that you’re not going to smell the same flower that I do from it, but that’s only because I know who already does.”

“Who does… what?”

“Not everyone will smell different things, but there is only one who will find the same as you.”

It takes a second for Adora to get it. 

“You mean you smell the same thing as only one other person? Like, soulmates?” Adora hadn’t thought Plumeria gave much thought to that type of ideology here. If anything, they would be the least likely to, for how fluidly they believed love flowed through the universe.

Perfuma shrugs like she’s had this conversation many times before. “It means whatever you want it to mean, that’s between you and your other half. For me it was my mother. The Heart-Blossom is where I feel most connected to her. To my family, my lineage. This is where their energies flow most strongly through me.”

Like Angella on the bridge suspended over the castle, standing under the Moonstone, thrumming with power like blood forged from gold.

“Would you like to smell it?”

What a strange question, but Adora’s stomach still twists at it. “Me?”

“No idiot, she’s talking to me.”

Perfuma giggles. “Yes you, silly. Come on, it’s always fun the first time.”

Adora doesn’t get much say in the matter because Perfuma is already clasping warm fingers around her wrist and dragging her to the tree with a surprising bout of strength.

With the princess’ hand off the stone, it begins to fade back to its soft pink, unassuming and lukewarm, but Adora still eyes it warily. It’s hard to tell where instinct ends and paranoia begins most of the time these days, if the lump in her throat as she’s pulled closer is a rightful intuition she should be listening to or just another anxious reflex.

She reasons it’s the latter, given there’s only so much trouble that can come from sniffing a tree.

“Well?” Perfuma presses excitedly, hovering close behind her. 

Adora carefully walks between the roots of the tree and, slowly, as she inches her face close to the stone, a wave of cool calm washes over her.

“It’s like um.” Adora licks her lips. “It smells like gas. And oil, I think. Like something is burning. Something old.”

“It can have a new smell?” Perfuma asks amusedly.

“Oh yes,” Adora says at the same time that Catra snorts, “ _Obviously._ ”

Their eyes flicker together for a moment, and there’s something private about the small smile they share that has nothing to do with the obvious circumstances.

“Huh. That’s neat,” Perfuma says. “It’s usually something more floral, but I guess you’re not from here. One of my ladies in the gardens smells rotten seaweed, and she has family originally from Salineas.”

Adora considers telling her that despite its long history, there’s nothing old about the athenaeum she was raised in — all odorless technology and clean power — so it likely has nothing to do with where she’s from, but it doesn’t seem relevant.

“Everyone carries energy within them,” Perfuma says with a certain softness as Adora ambles back to her side. “It’s more than your soul, it’s the core of your being, the signature of your life. Our energy tends to run slower in life, and that keeps us grounded to this world. To read the energies of others, you must be moving fast enough to keep up with others. When I’m at home with the stone, I can do that.”

Adora focuses carefully on her words, plays them back in her mind. “What did you mean when you said mine runs faster?”

“She means you’re more connected than most people,” Catra says with far more confidence than Adora would expect from her. She has her arms crossed, a focused furrow in her brow. “She can feel this. Us.”

Adora’s question both amuses and thrills the princess. “Oh Adora, it means you’re moving just quick enough to catch something.“

Those words land cold in Adora’s ears, and she almost misses it when Catra mutters, “Or someone.”

“I’m surprised you don’t feel any different. This stone — being so close to my mother, my tether to the spiritual — it opens me to all the energies that linger around me. It’s how I can read you now.” Perfuma cocks her head, a smile like she already knows. “My only wonder is, what’s opening you?”

The word _spiritual_ reminds Adora of something. “You said we run slow in life. Does our energy change after we die?”

“Mm, that’s a complicated question. Short answer, our energy is always changing.”

“And the long answer?”

“Let’s just say that energy is much faster when it’s not being held down by a temple of flesh and bone. That freedom allows for it to exist both here and there.”

“Where’s there?”

“That’s not really what you want to ask, is it?”

Adora swallows and suddenly wants to steer this conversation far away from this arena.

But Catra steps forward, and there’s a hard edge of authority to her when she says, “Tell her about me.”

She can hear the thuds of her heart in her ears, and the words are chained to her throat the longer Perfuma gives her that knowing smile.

“Dude, she can tell I’m here. What the hell are you waiting for?”

The better question: what is Adora so suddenly afraid of?

Perfuma sighs, but nothing like disappointment. “You don’t have to. Sometimes it’s more important to sit without answers for a while.”

“For fuck’s sake, Adora, _tell her I’m here_.”

Perfuma reaches for Adora’s hand, just the very tips of her fingers, the same hand that Catra had grazed just minutes ago. Adora stares at the place where they meet, where Adora’s skin dips to accommodate the gentle press of Perfuma’s touch, where two living things refuse to occupy the same space. She presses exactly to the spot of Adora’s fingertips that still tingle with cold.

Perfuma smiles, sweet like molasses. “Sometimes it’s better just to trust.”

⚔

“What the hell kind of game are you playing at?” 

Catra is pacing the length of the private yurt Adora’s been set up in as her room. 

From the outside, it’s a simple, unassuming tent. Plants cradle its frame like they would a rock, but the inside is both cozy and well-ventilated. The walls are lined with ferns and golden pothos, woven to keep the heat out and twisting around the wooden posts hold the structure’s shape together. It’s modest otherwise, only a place to sleep and a round, unused pit in the center for a woodfire, though Adora doubts it’s been needed in ages. 

She leans against one of the wooden posts now and feels like a scolded child. She stares at the floor. 

“Like okay sure, for all we know she just might be some hippie that munches on magic fungi in her spare time, but at least she knows something. Hell of a lot more than you or I do, that’s for sure.”

“I couldn’t.” 

“Sorry, you couldn’t? Oh, got it.” Catra barks a cold laugh. “I forgot you’re the one nobody can see, right?”

“We don’t know what would happen.” 

“Really, excuse the fuck out of me, because apparently you’re the one nobody can hear, the one that can’t so much as sit down in a fucking chair without falling on their ass, the one that apparently no one has even noticed is gone, the one—

“I don’t know who we’re supposed to trust!” Adora interrupts aggravatedly. She thinks she might choke on the ice-cold frustration in her chest. “Do you know anything about her? Because I certainly don’t, and I just think there’s a reason we’ve been cautious so far about telling anyone.”

“What are you talking about? We? No, _you’ve_ been cautious. If I had it my way, you would be on the Horde’s doorstep right now demanding they tell us what happened to me.”

“Since when has that been what you wanted?”

“Since when hasn’t it? You think I actually like dallying around with you and a bunch of stuck-up princesses all day?”

That stings more than she’s willing to admit. “You never asked.”

Catra cocks her jaw, but she doesn’t look angry. Tired, bewildered. “Would you have said yes?”

“Look. My point still stands. I— _we_ only just met her today.”

“So? Didn’t you cram your big brain with all the details and trivia of all the princesses?”

“Knowing someone’s cultural textbook and political values doesn’t mean knowing what they’ll do next.”

“Then what does it mean? Seriously, you know — you claim you’re searching for answers, but you won’t actually tell any of these princesses what you’re looking for. You've got the weight of an entire kingdom on your back, but you refuse to let anyone help you. What magical thing do you need from somebody to just admit you can’t do this alone?”

“You heard her today,” Adora says defensively, but she knows her argument is falling apart. A headache is pinching behind her eyes, cold and relentless. “Maybe— maybe we shouldn’t be rushing to find answers.”

“Don’t pick and choose just what works for you, Marquess.” Catra hasn’t addressed her by her official title since they first met, and something about how she uses it now sits sticky and hot in her ears. “She said you’ve gotta trus too. But you apparently don’t know anything about that.”

“I trust you.”

It’s out before Adora can stop herself. Maybe she doesn’t mean it, maybe she just wants to remind Catra that they’re in this together and there’s no need to dig a trench between them, maybe she _does_ mean it, but.

Unexpectedly, this doesn’t seem to impress or surprise her. Catra’s mouth only sags with disappointment. “That’s nice. You trust the ghost, the only person who couldn’t hurt you even if they wanted to. What a leap of faith you’re taking.”

_You can probably hurt me more than either of us realize._

“What do you not even trust her with?” Catra continues. “Are you worried about being called a nutjob? Is that what this still is about? This is my life we’re talking about, and you’ve made it crystal clear that it doesn’t make a difference to you if I live or die.”

Something’s wrong.

When her headache throbs again, it’s a cruel pulse in her temples, and Adora’s stomach just about lurches into her mouth. “I— I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Catra only blinks, taken aback by the quick change. “What, like actually?”

The same jerk of nausea just above her diaphragm, the hollow pit at the back of her throat, it reminds her of the hundreds of hours she would spend pushing her body to its limits. The running, climbing, digging, jumping, _pushing_. On an empty stomach, on a full one, during a storm, on the first day of spring, in the middle of the night, on the cusp of a plague.

This feels worse.

“Okay, um, let’s just go for a walk, yeah?” Catra gestures to the tent flap, her tone so gentle it almost doesn’t sound like her, not in the wake of their spat.

Adora’s skin is clammy, but it’s far from hot. Even on Plumeria’s cruel summer night, she still just feels so _cold_ , and the idea of going out into the night air isn’t appealing in the slightest.

But neither is shivering under a tarp in the woods looking for the best corner to vomit in.

Adora clutches her jacket tightly around her as they step under the dark sky. Without the glow of the Moonstone, it’s no longer swirling shades of violet, instead just a glaze of darkness overhead, an atmosphere unimpeded by civilization. No lights are left on in the town, no torches or fires, and it’s in no small way unlike Brightmoon, a kingdom that never seems to sleep itself. It reminds Adora of the quiet of home, of the absolute black of her room in the athenaeum. 

If it weren’t for Catra, Adora’s not sure she would be able to see much at all. Wherever the girl walks, Adora can see perfectly. It reminds her of when they first met on that indigo shore, both so fascinated with each other for all the wrong reasons. Adora had noticed Catra’s two differently colored eyes and wanted to see the world through them. Now, Adora wonders if she already does.

They don’t talk, Adora’s teeth chattering the only sound between them. Her head is too clouded and pierced with cold to think straight, to properly process what’s happening to her. Was she poisoned? Did she eat something? Is this— panic? She read about panic attacks when she was eight.

When they reach the stone, she’s not sure who was leading who, because while she had thought she was following Catra, Catra doesn’t seem like she had the intent of taking them here at all. She stares wide-eyed at the stone, mesmerized.

The Heart-Blossom is not quite _on_ in the way it was during the day with Perfuma around, but it still lets off an ever-so-faint pink glow. It reminds Adora of the computer screens she’d study with in the athenaeum, right after she’s turned them off, just before they’ve fully powered down.

“Do you smell anything?”

Catra’s head swivel towards her, and the look she gives Adora is like she can’t tell if Adora’s forgotten again or just truly this naive. 

Catra still tries, and she shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Even if she knew that would be the answer, Adora still feels disappointed. 

She finds herself thinking about energies, about what kind of frequency Catra’s soul must be vibrating at right now, at what frequency Adora must be in order to see and hear her. She wonders if they’re meeting in the middle, somewhere, both reaching for something just slightly beyond, or if they’re the same. If this is their secret meeting ground, and no one else holds the key because no one else is exactly where they are.

She thinks about Perfuma, how her connection to her mother is what opens her up to read others. She wonders, too, just like the princess herself had asked, what connection it is that opens Adora to see Catra.

“Do you feel that?”

Adora’s getting so tired of this question. “Feel what?”

Catra touches her own chest, and then seems startled when her fingers make contact with her own skin, as if the move hadn’t been conscious.

When Catra doesn’t say anything else, Adora realizes her nausea has passed. She’s still cold, and so she tucks her hands tightly into the cuffs of her sleeves, but it’s not so debilitating anymore. Her mind is clearing like how fog parts from a field.

“Thank you,” Adora says in a slow exhale, centering her breathing. “I’m sorry for not telling Perfuma. This all feels so… delicate. Whether you believe me or not, I want to do this right, for you. I’m not used to coming into something without a plan, without knowing all the facts. I thought she could guide me to the right books or teach me the right theory, I wasn’t expecting to tell her. I don’t know what will happen when I do, if anything will, but… I’m not exactly known for taking risks.”

Adora looks up, and Catra is watching her with round, curious eyes. A look like that, this last week together feels eternal.

“I’ll request an audience with her tomorrow night,” Adora finishes. “And we can find out what she knows then.”

Catra smiles then, and if only in that moment, all their fights and arguing feels distant. 

“I mean this in the most respectful way possible,” Catra says, “but I don’t think a princess who walks around barefoot needs you to ‘request an audience’ to see her.”

Adora looks pointedly down at Catra’s bare feet.

“Oh fuck off, it’s different.”

Adora laughs, and it feels good. Not quite the warmth she’s craving, still a strain at her temples, but it soothes like cold water down a parched throat.

“We’re going to figure this out,” she says. “I’ll take you home myself if I have to.”

Adora leads them back to her tent after that. Maybe it was just the fresh air or maybe the stone, but she feels like she found what she was looking for out here. Holding the tent flap open for Catra is more a formality than anything, but so is the way that Catra ducks her head to step inside.

Adora asks before she loses her nerve. “Will you stay tonight?”

Ever since the incident on the mountain, Catra has made herself scarce. Still, she nods now like she was planning to all along.

Once Adora’s readied herself for bed (Catra faces the tent wall when she dresses, and the idle small-talk they make feels as forced as it does necessary), she crawls onto the plant-woven bedding. It’s a fusion of catmint and some kind of cotton, intersecting cool comfort in the heat with comfort from the hard ground, and it feels no different from any normal bed Adora’s slept on.

To her surprise, when she lays down, Catra does not remain wandering the edges of the room like she has before. She simply sits down on the ground and, after a moment, lays down beside her.

Adora’s not even tired. Not like that, at least.

“Do you miss it?”

Catra props her elbow underneath her head, her ear tucking back into the crook of it, as she faces Adora. They’re close enough for Adora to count the freckles that paint Catra’s cheeks. “Miss what? Being alive?”

Normally Adora is the one to talk like that. It’s crueler to hear than it is coming out of her mouth.

“Home, the Fright Zone.”

“Funny hearing those two in the same sentence.” Adora doesn’t get it, and she figures her expression conveys as much, because Catra takes a breath and adds, “You know that partner I told you about?” Adora nods. “She always said home wasn’t about where you were from or where you lived.”

“I assume you’ll tell me what it’s about then.”

“You can probably figure it out, nerd.”

Just because she can doesn’t mean she wants to. “People?”

Catra shrugs. “Something like that.” 

Adora looks away from her face. That’s fitting, she thinks. She has people, but she’s never met them. She’d dedicated her entire life to her home, but they will never be hers to love. To be loved in return. Her home, always just out of reach.

She thinks of Bow and Glimmer, but it doesn’t feel the same.

Catra breaks the awkward moment. “You said your Grandmaster raised you, right?”

“She trained me, yes.”

Catra looks like she wants to say something to that, but she all too clearly holds it back. And then, “Do you miss her?”

“No.” Adora’s surprised by her own immediacy, but not by her answer.

“Did you guys not get along?”

“No, we did. I just never felt much for her. And I don’t think she felt much for me either. Nothing bad, but nothing particularly remarkable either. She taught me everything I know, and I’m grateful for that.”

“But?” 

Adora doesn’t like this part anymore. She turns the question back around. “What was she like? Your partner.”

Catra’s tail curls over her own hip, flicks against her thigh. There’s something like panic in her eyes. “I… I don’t remember, actually.”

“Did you feel at home with her?”

Catra’s look is scathing but not angry. It slices through Adora like ice.

“Once, maybe. We haven’t talked in a long time. We… we had a fight, or something.”

Adora knows she only imagines it, but she swears she feels Catra’s breath on her face. “What do you wish for? When you close your eyes at night, when you imagine that nothing is impossible and you could have anything.”

The answer should be obvious. It is, until it isn’t.

“I wish you weren’t so sad,” Catra whispers, a twitch in her brow as she frowns ever so slightly. It doesn’t feel like the answer to Adora’s question, but like she's referring to something else. A non sequitur.

A lump forms in her throat. “I’m not sad.”

“You’re not happy.”

This feels rehearsed. 

“Is anyone?”

“Just because they aren’t doesn’t mean you can’t be.”

This doesn’t.

“There’s no time to be happy,” Adora says. “And my time is too valuable to pay for such a cost.”

“What if there was time?”

Adora knows it’s cruel to ask it this way. “And what if you were alive?”

This doesn’t offend Catra as much as it used to. She’s been starting to imply the same thing herself.

“What if?” she asks, not like an echo, but like she’s asking Adora the very same question.

“I would—”

Say it. _Say it._

“You wouldn’t need me, I guess.”

⚔

_“Squadron D is ready to move on my command,” Adora says, flipping a page over the clipboard. “I know you said to wait until morning, but I don’t see the point. If I send them now, they’ll make it by dawn and can report back to us on the transmitters by midday.”_

_“You’re too impatient.”_

_“Why shouldn’t I be?” Adora just barely keeps from snapping back. “It’s been too long already without anything new. I don’t get how you’re not counting by the hour.”_

_“Because at a certain point, you must accept that *̸̧͖̘̃*̶̩̍*̵͎̘̰̬͙͉̇*̸̢̯͖̀*̴̰̒'̷̨̢̛͉̲̬͍͑͗͑̉*̴̼̺̊͛̍̀̚͝ ̴̧͎̳̩͈̊̚*̴̢̡̥̻͉̏̏͌*̵̘͔̏̊̃͂͝*̵̡̞̟͍͈͉̑̒̒̍̾̈́*̴̥̥̥̠͈̭͝͝_ _.”_

_Adora’s head jolts painfully, and the woman before her flickers. Her red face, those dark pits for eyes. Everything goes so white it’s nearly blue, only for a moment, before settling back again._

_“I don’t have to accept shit,” Adora says. “I don’t care if you’ve given up. I’m stronger than you, and if that means doing what you’re too much of a coward to do, then—”_

_A lightning current of shock shreds through her, and the next thing she knows, she’s being slammed back against the metal walls. Her vision blurs, all she sees is red._

_The dark face presses close, and Adora swears only death itself can smell this cruel._

_“Then nothing,” the shadow whispers. “You’ll do well to remember I am all that’s keeping you alive.”_

⚔

Heart in her mouth, stomach on the floor, Adora lurches awake again. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

This time, Catra is already beside her, sitting cross-legged and leaning almost too close.

Her chest still heaving for breath, skin clammy and cold, they only stare at each other, startled, for moments that seem to stretch on far too long.

“I, uh—” Catra scrambles to her feet, running her hand back over her hair and flattening her ears. “I was just about to wake you. They’re about to serve breakfast. Weirdos eat at dawn.”

She watches Catra for another second, wishing she’d sit back down, wanting to lay back down herself, not wanting to leave the safe comfort of this tent. But, she reasons, choking down her anxiety, it’s likely only a leftover unease from the nightmare. This is Plumeria, the most peaceful kingdom on the planet. There are no woes that await her outside, only the ones in her mind.

Adora does collapse back into her bed, if only to indulge for a second. “Okay. Give me a minute.”

“You’re still having those dreams?”

Adora only has to roll her head slightly to look up at Catra, who’s still standing. Mutely, she nods.

“Did you have them at home, too?”

Catra referring to Eternia that way, after the conversation they had the night before, should make everything feel darker. It should sink her heart, be a nick at her impenetrable loneliness, a reminder of something she will never have.

Looking up at her sharp face, the angle of her jawline from this low, the steady weight of her eyes — Adora doesn’t feel any of that.

“No,” Adora says simply. She takes a quick, sharp breath, and then she’s rolling off from the sleeping mat. “I’m good, though. Let me get dressed and we’ll go.”

“We?”

But Catra is smirking, and all animosity from their argument seems… maybe not gone, but forgiven. Adora smiles too. “Unless you want to stay and twiddle your thumbs here, then yes, _we_. Jerk.”

It’s only later, when it seems that breakfast still isn’t for another hour, that Adora wonders if Catra was watching her sleep, but maybe it’s for the best that it’s too late to ask. It means she can smile into her peach, softly and to herself, and no one else will know what it’s for, not even the ghost herself.

⚔

Getting ahold of any of Plumeria’s records seems impossible to accomplish on her own. The elder’s archive, supposedly where all their reports and histories are kept, specifically requires Perfuma’s accompaniment to enter. Luckily, Adora does secure her audience with Perfuma, though not until the afternoon.

Which means.

“You have a day off?” Catra asks carefully, like she’s convinced she’s misunderstood.

Adora nods. “Apparently none of the elders are interested in any lecture, they don’t like outsiders much. So, they won’t give me anything without her, and they also don’t want anything from me. I’m supposed to teach Perfuma everything instead.”

“Who’s busy.”

“Until the afternoon, yes.”

“So you’re free.”

“I mean, I wasn’t exactly imprisoned before, but—”

The smile that stretches Catra’s mouth emphasizes the sharpness of her fangs. It would likely intimidate anyone else, and for reasons that have nothing to do with Catra’s current physical state, Adora only finds it endearing.

“So tell me then, _My Lady_ ,” Catra says with a faux-lofty tone. “If you could do anything today, anything you’ve ever dreamt of doing growing up, what would it be?”

The way Catra holds her hands out seems to be more symbolic than serious, but it doesn’t change how Adora finds herself wanting to take it anyway. There’s something fun about this side of Catra, and not like the spontaneous and adventurous _fun_ that make up Bow and Glimmer. No, this taunting gesture and that mischievous smile — it’s more dangerous, and not for any harm that Adora could come into, but for how easily Adora feels like she could agree to anything Catra suggests for as long as she continues looking at her like that.

⚔

“I can’t believe, after twenty years of being a lonely hermit, to have a day with no one to tell you what to do or anyone watching over your shoulder, a day where you can do literally _anything you want,_ you decided you want to play a board game. For. Six. Hours.”

“What? I’ve never played shahra with a real person before. And in all fairness, two of those hours were spent teaching you how to play. Also, your time perception is improving.”

Catra rolls her eyes. “And here I thought you might’ve had more exciting prospects about your debut into humanity. How shortsighted of me.”

Following the path to Perfuma’s tent, Adora huffs to try and hide her amusement. Because Catra _is_ being a brat, and she doesn’t deserve to see that Adora’s smiling. “And what would you have suggested?”

“We could’ve gone to see a volcano.”

“There aren’t any within eighty kilometers of us.”

“A waterfall, then.”

“We just saw one in Brightmoon, and you didn’t seem much interested in it.”

“Go to the ocean.” 

“We’re going to Salineas in a few days.”

“So we ride a fucking moose-donkey through a desert until we find somewhere more interesting than a bunch of forests.”

“I think you mean a camel-donkey, and I’m pretty sure the reasons we can’t do that are clear. Namely your lack of a corporeal form.”

“You really know how to suck the fun out of anything, don’t you?”

This does get Adora to stop, a brief flare of uncertainty surpassing her need to be on time for the meeting. “Did you really not like shahra?”

Catra stops only a couple meters ahead of her, confused as to why Adora’s stopped, but some childish sort of vulnerability must be on Adora’s face because the ghost softens.

“Yeah, okay, I liked your stupid game.”

“You don’t have to lie for my sake.”

“You really think I care enough about you to lie to you?” Catra says with a smile, lighthearted, in a very _Catra_ way of being assuring. Sarcastic, rude, sweet, all in the same breath. 

It’s this kind of fresh air that Adora grew up fantasizing about, but she doesn’t know how to put that into words without coming off as strange. 

Catra asked Adora what she always dreamt about having, all that she could want, but maybe it wasn’t the right question. Adora’s dreamt of many things, almost none of which things that she’s actually wanted. No, Catra should’ve asked about what she craved and longed for when she was awake.

They’d been playing the game virtually on one of Adora’s holographic wristbands out in the meadows, far enough from the town for no one to catch her speaking to herself but still close enough to make it back quickly enough. The sun’s been descending from its highest peak for a little while now — she really should have left to meet with Perfuma an hour ago — and despite the brilliance of its rays, Adora still feels as cool and refreshed as if under the shade and lounging in a spring pool. 

“Maybe not enough to lie to me,” Adora says. “But at least enough to play it with me for six hours.”

Catra snickers, but Adora’s already walking again. “You’re really pushing your luck.”

“You know, oddly enough? I’m not too worried.”

“Whatever. Just next time you’ve got a day off from your nerd duties and we’re not dissecting me, _I_ get to pick what we do, got it?”

 _Next time._ “Fine by me.”

“Promise?”

Adora laughs, her cheeks sore from smiling. “I promise.”

Hardly even a second passes before Catra’s hand shoots out to clasp around Adora’s wrist, tugging Adora to a stop again. It’s not until Adora registers the sinister sharpness of her claws pressing into her skin that Adora remembers this shouldn’t be possible at all.

She jolts. “How are you—”

“I remember.” Catra laughs, but it’s more like a choked sob than anything. It’s a sound Adora’s never heard, thick and trembling even in two short words.

Adora’s not sure whether to be amazed or horrified. “Remember what?”

Catra meets her eyes with a cold sort of wretchedness Adora’s only ever felt in her dreams.

“You,” she answers, breathless. “I remember you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “shahra” = chess + me having fun with the etymology of the word and making it a she-ra universe word (which, linguistically speaking, means adding -ra to anything and calling it a day)
> 
> :)


	4. it's a sad story, but it's still our story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw’s:  
> \- fevers + illness  
> \- implications of past abuse (nothing worse than anything depicted in the show)

The body is, essentially, a sack of water.

A little over half of it is made up of the stuff. The skin is mostly water, the brain and heart are even _more_ mostly water, and lungs are, essentially, entirely water (only 17% of them are not). Even bones aren’t exempt from being made of a large fraction of this ingredient.

So, forget blood. 

Every aqueous substance that seeps through Adora’s flesh and arteries runs _cold._

Everything that pumps through her veins now, all the fluid that keeps her brain buoyant, that cushions the crevices of her spine, is all just a debilitating plunge of freezer-burn.

The only thing she feels stronger than the cold is Catra’s hand clenched around her wrist now.

“How are you doing that?” Adora has to force her brain to focus, like calling order to a pile of sludge. “What do you mean, you remember me?”

“Fuck. Shit, Adora. _Fuck_.” Catra’s grip just tightens and her breath comes faster.

And then she lets go.

Adora chances a look around her to see if anyone is paying them any attention. Luckily they aren’t, but she ducks behind a tree anyway, beckoning the girl after her. “Catra, what are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

Catra’s just shaking her head and raking her hands back through her hair, and she only follows along after her like an afterthought. And then her head jerks up, and the look she pierces Adora with is more finite than a razor. Before Adora can repeat her question, Catra just rushes to her and, consequently, when their faces hover so close together that she brings a subarctic chill with her like a cloud, Adora stumbles back in turn. The crush of hurt on Catra’s face is visceral, but Adora doesn’t understand, this avoidance isn’t anything new for them.

“You’re alive,” the ghost whispers.

“Yes?” Adora almost reaches out for her, cold be damned, if only to soothe the manic glint in her eyes, but she refrains. “Was that not a confirmed point before?”

Catra’s eyes glaze over, and with a jolt of horror, Adora thinks she might be about to cry. “You… you still don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what? Catra, what are you talking about?”

“This can’t be happening.” Catra spins in a circle, taking in their surroundings as if she only just now realizes where they are. “This doesn’t make any sense, how is this happening? I don’t— how is this real? Why—” She whirls back on Adora. “Why can’t you _see_ it?”

“See what? You’re starting to scare me.”

Her voice begins to break, thick with desperate grief. “Adora, please, it’s me. It’s me. You have to snap out of it, please.”

There’s only so many times Adora can say it. She stares back at her, lost. 

Catra rushes forward again, clutching Adora by the shoulders. Again, she really touches her, fingers wrapped around Adora’s arms, nails digging into her flesh through her shirt, Adora _feels_ her breath in her own mouth.

“I’m Catra, me, your best friend. We— We grew up together in the Horde, you have a scar on your left knee from the time you thought you had a splinter and made me try to dig it out with a switchblade. You used to save the grey ration bars for me because they’re my favorite. We told Kyle that there were monsters in the shower drain and that he had to let the water run for three minutes before getting in to wash them out or they would eat away at his toes. You used to braid my hair to help me fall asleep when I’d had a shitty day, and I used to get jealous and petty if you did it for anyone else. You didn’t know until we were six that brushing your teeth was a real thing you were supposed to do every night and not just a game everyone agreed to play, and you had eleven cavities the year you found out. You slept on the bottom bunk and I slept above you, and when we were nine Shadow Weaver tried to move me to the West Wing but you refused to eat for three days until she moved me back. You told me last year that even if the world ended at the edge of the universe, then we were proof of something beyond it, and I told you that you were full of shit. Adora, we were _us_.”

Vaguely, she thinks a cloud must be moving out from in front of the sun, because Adora feels a thin sheen of warmth gently swim over her skin now. Not yet uncomfortable, still just a honey’s kiss.

She stumbles. 

“Catra, I’m sorry, I don’t know what it is that you’re remembering, or— or who, but that’s not… I think you have me confused with someone else.”

“Please.” Catra doesn’t seem to hear her, already shaking her head. “Please don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m too late.”

They’re at an impasse, but Adora doesn’t understand what divides them in the first place.

“Look.” Adora shimmies out of her grasp and waves over her shoulder, helpless. “We don’t have time for this right now. Let’s just go meet with Perfuma, and she’ll help us figure this out, okay?”

“Please don’t go.” This time, when Catra reaches for her, her hands pass through Adora entirely in the same plunge of cold, and Adora flinches away from her again. 

“I’m not who you think I am,” Adora says, harsher this time. “I’m sorry, for whoever it is that you’ve lost, but I was raised in a metal colosseum with only a computer and a military general for companions. I— I want this life you’re describing, but it’s not mine.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t push me away.”

“Is that what this is about? I already told you I’m not going anywhere, I’m determined to see this through.”

“There’s nowhere to see this to, Adora! It’s just you and me, and I don’t know what happened to us, but I’m begging you to believe me. You can’t _leave_ me, not agai—”

Something lurches Catra to a stop, like something violent has caught her tongue. If it were possible, her skin rushes a few shades paler, and for a moment she looks about as nauseous as Adora had felt the night before.

“What...?” 

Her eyes shadow, her mouth twists into a sinister frown. When Catra speaks again, her voice sounds like it is only just barely keeping level, glazed with a brittle anger that makes the hair on the back of Adora’s neck stand.

“You left.”

“What? I’m standing right here.”

This time, when Catra’s eyes well with tears, it’s not with the same sad desperation as before. She’s nearly scarlet with rage. 

Adora doesn’t keep a pocket time-dial, but she’s ninety-percent certain she’s already late to her meeting with Perfuma. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she says. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about but let’s just go talk to Perfuma. She’s waiting for me, and she probably knows better about what this is than—”

“You’re a fucking liar. You remember everything, don’t you?”

Adora’s losing her patience. “I need you to calm down.”

“What did you do to me?”

This reminds her of when they first met, in the Brightmoon dining hall. All glaring eyes and ferocious accusations. “You’re confused, okay? Please just come with me.”

“Was it not enough for you? Leaving us all behind, everything you said — what? You didn’t think it cut deep enough? Did you want to get creative with all the ways you could ruin me?”

Even if nothing of this is familiar, this intimate fury still feels the most personal of all.

“I don’t know how many times I have to say this,” Adora says back with barely contained irritation, so unused to this inner battle of frustration and concern. “But that. Wasn’t. Me. I am sorry that someone has hurt you, but last we discussed I am just about the only person who cares what happens to you now. I’m trying to help you, so I need you to pull it together and come with me.”

Working her jaw together so cruelly it must be painful, Catra stares back at Adora with— 

Is there a friend of apathy, just detached enough to look like hatred, but without all those messy strings attached? One that says — _I hate you, but I will never give you the satisfaction that warrants._ Catra looks so at home with an expression like that.

And then she laughs. She _laughs_ like they’ve known each other for millennia.

Adora hesitates. “What’s so funny?”

Catra tilts her head with a droll, lopsided grin. “You said that back then, too. That you were the only one who cared about me. That no one else ever would.”

Wet and humid, Adora doesn’t know when it became so hot out here. “Listen to me — I’m not your enemy. Your memories have been hazy this whole time, is it really so impossible to consider you might be the one who’s wrong here?”

“I bet that would make everything so much easier for you, wouldn’t it? If I just rolled over and agreed with you blindly?”

“Yes actually, it would.”

“Fuck you, Adora.”

That doesn’t hurt as much as she’d expect.

“Before, I just thought you were a bitch and a coward and that sucked because I blamed myself for not making you stay. But now? Now I see that you’re just a lying _coward_ , and if this is what you do to the people you care about, then I don’t want any part of it.”

That does. And then some.

They’re not tears in Adora’s eyes but it burns just as hot and relentlessly there anyway.

“What’s the game here?” Catra asks, hollow. “Was this all just to mess with my head? Did you want to make sure we stopped looking for you? Because congrats, it’s mission accomplished either way.”

“I—”

“Do you want me to let you go? Or do you just want to prove how I’ll always wake up every morning haunted by you?” Something in Catra’s eyes flicker, blurs in and out, but the melancholy exhaustion is constant. “I’ll give you either, I’ll give you both. Just please, let me go first.”

To say that Adora is at a loss for words feels too cheap, too simple an answer. It’s not quite accurate either. There’s so many assurances she could muster, more assuaging words she could string together, a good number of which might actually soothe this wreckage. There’s still so much left she could say. 

“My name is Adora Grayskull,” she says, like the words are being cherry-picked from her tongue. “I am the crowned Marquess of Eternia, and I have been raised as a scholar of seclusion for the last twenty years of my life. I do not know who you are, and I do not know who you’re looking for. I made you an offer to help you understand whatever curse has befallen you, and it is at your own discretion whether you take that offer. I have nothing else to say on the matter.”

Catra doesn’t look taken aback, but Adora’s starting to wonder if she ever knew how to read Catra at all.

“That’s all you have to say,” the ghost says.

It’s not a question. Adora nods.

She doesn’t walk away, she turns in. She’s never done this before, but when she does, it is so very ghostly that it shouldn’t surprise Adora in the way it does. 

Adora nods, Catra looks away, and then she’s simply not there at all.

⚔

“Oh Adora, yes! You’re finally here. Come here and taste this mud mask and tell me where it’s from.” And then, to the fae sitting on the quilt beside her, Perfuma beams and says, “You would not believe how talented she is. I can give her just about anything that’s imported and she’ll tell us where it’s from. Magic! I always knew the First Ones were using magic.”

After Catra vanished with the unmoving air outside, there was nowhere else to go but Perfuma’s tent, though it was more like a pavilion than Adora’s little yurt. Whether Catra is with her or not, there’s only one direction for Adora to go. This was the plan, and Adora does not deviate.

Adora almost forgets to correct the princess, but by the time she remembers, she’s already dipping her finger into a wooden bowl — yes, that is definitely mud — and she’s too tired to fight for politically correct titles towards her people.

There’s not much to contemplate. Adora rolls the smear of paste around on her tongue before swallowing, and the sticky residue it leaves on the roof of her mouth, along with the tangy aftertaste, is telling enough.

“Brightmoon,” Adora says, but she struggles to even pretend she’s excited by Perfuma’s squeal of delight at her answer. 

“And how can you tell?” 

“It’s made from grape leaves, which are native to Brightmoon. They muddle it into face masks, brew it in teas, cook it with rice and fish. Et cetera.”

Perfuma launches into another bout of clapping and laughter, and her friends politely join in too.

It’s not that Adora minds being a circus animal, it’s just that it shouldn’t be this hard to force a smile.

The princess, on the other hand, wears a white smile so unabashed and effortless that it should be infectious, but Adora just feels so alone, and she’s thankful when Perfuma requests everyone else to leave them to themselves.

“Thank you Adora,” she says, taking the bowl back, and then she pauses. “Or well, do you want to put some on? I was going to do it later, but since you’re already here…”

“Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about, your highness.” 

“We can talk and lather at the same time. Hold this.” After tugging Adora down onto the quilt, Perfuma stuffs the bowl back into her hands again and sets to working the mud onto Adora’s face. At the first wet slap of paste to her cheek, Adora winces, but Perfuma’s fingers are gentle and the knit in her brow focused. “Okay, go ahead. Just don’t move your mouth too much.”

Adora clears her throat, opens her mouth to —

The empty room around them has never felt so prominent, that ever-familiar chill never so far away. The hot humidity of Plumeria encases her body like one giant, sweaty glove, and any cool relief that the slow trail of sweat down the back of her neck might offer is too distant to actually feel.

Adora came here for one thing. She’s not a quitter, that is not something she even has the privilege of knowing how to _do_. There was never a choice in this.

_That’s all you have to say._

The right question sits on the heaviest curve of her tongue, nearly roots her to the floor. 

“I was wondering what you knew about dream incubation,” Adora says, and she feels the sun more viscerally than ever. “I know it’s not a therapy you use anymore, but I read that you used to keep people asleep for sometimes days at a time.”

Perfuma laughs, her fingers wet with mud, her nose wrinkling with her smile. “You never take a break from studying, do you? I’ll make you a deal. Finish up these face masks with me and then I’ll take you to the elder’s archive to see what we can find. Is that okay with you?”

Adora nods minutely and looks down as Perfuma finishes coating her face.

She told Catra that her people were her priority. She’s only following through on that promise.

It’s not quitting, is it? If she wasn’t the one who did it first? 

⚔

_There’s nothing to hear. They’re in an empty hallway._

_She stands much taller than Adora, at least a good foot over her. She doesn’t recognize her. Even with the sad drop of her mouth, pale skin and paler tufts of white hair falling over such crestfallen eyes, she still looks kind._

_Adora doesn’t remember what she’s said to have this girl look at her in such a way. So compliant in her disappointment, so understanding of this poor plight._

_It’s always a kind face that can crack open so wide yet stay so quiet._

_“We all lost her, you know,” the girl tells her. “No one said you had to go too.”_

_When the girl turns and walks soundlessly back down the arched metal hall, an apology hiccups in Adora’s throat. Instinctual, desperate to come out,_ longing.

_It sticks to her teeth like glue, and Adora lets her leave without a word._

⚔

When Adora gasps awake, choking for air, the weight of overwhelming sadness crushing her ribs, Catra isn’t there to soothe her. She still looks around for her, but the ghost is nowhere to be seen.

She falls back to the bed still lathered in sweat, the heat inescapable. 

She wonders how old she must have been when she learned to wear a callous face with such loud confidence, and she falls asleep without guessing at an answer.

⚔

“Are you there?”

Adora’s feet pad across the cement floor, the abandoned lab insulating the echo of her voice like cotton. For a town in the woods, there is a surprising limitation to the number of places she can go to be alone without fear of accidental eavesdropping. The mill that Perfuma showed her on her first day is about the only place in the daytime where no one lingers, so long as the princess herself is occupied elsewhere.

No answer.

“Look,” Adora starts, licking her lips. This is truly above her paygrade. “You lost someone, I can see that. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. I lost my temper, and I’m sorry. Can you just come back? Come back and we can figure this out, and I can help you find whoever it is that you’re looking for. It’s been nearly two days, and I’m…”

_I’m worried I was your last hope and I broke you still._

“Just come back,” she finishes dumbly. “Please.”

She doesn’t even know if Catra’s here, if she can just hear her from wherever she is or if she is always hovering close by just out of Adora’s line of sight, surviving but not engaging.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, louder this time, though it sounds less sincere even to her own ears and more like a child being forced to apologize. “I’m sorry you’re confused and can’t remember your own life, and I’m sorry you’ve taken it upon yourself to project that onto me. I’m sorry it pains you so much to hear that I never suffered the banal rites of passage you and every other person on this planet have suffered because humanity is just so cruel to anyone who lives with it. I’m sorry I’m not _like_ you, and I’m sorry you’d rather throw away all this progress we’ve made together than accept that.”

The mildew-stained windows reflecting her own voice back at her is the only answer that comes. The empty shelves and half-broken, unused cookware stare at her mockingly. Here she is, the chosen scholar of an elite society, begging a long-abandoned room to talk back to her.

She tried, at least. That seems to be the only result she’s capable of achieving anymore.

⚔

“We use a phonemic orthographic system,” Adora says, tugging at the collar of her jacket to alleviate the heat. “Symbols for sounds. So, yes, it can be written out by hand like this, but it’s not customary.”

Perfuma traces her fingers over the neat print of Adora’s handwriting. “You have a writing system, but you don’t use it?”

“We do use it. We just don’t write it ourselves. We use oral transcription software, and it’s simpler to…” She trails off. A slippery suction of sweat is glueing her clothes to her skin, even under the shaded canopy of Perfuma’s home. Adora distractedly wipes her forehead with her wrist. “Sorry, um. It’s simpler to use an alphabet that corresponds to phonemes just because it’s easier for programming. Everyone does have access to the same software, and it’s rather laborious to print out by hand, so most of them don’t learn to write explicitly, only read.”

Perfuma is quiet and contemplative as she listens to Adora, regally attuned to her every word. And then, after a pause: “Them?”

A backtrack of her words plays like a recording in her own ears, and Adora resists wincing. “Us,” she corrects. “Most of us didn’t learn to write. I did, of course. Obviously.” When she forces a laugh, it sounds shrill even to her ears.

“Are you feeling alright?” Perfuma asks, and Adora instinctively paints a smile across her face like one of the symbols she’s printed. 

They’re all the same, in the end. Whether it comes from a written code or an electric signal, it’s still all just about rehearsal.

Maybe she was never taught explicitly how difficult it could be to hold eye contact when there’s a real, wobbling soul on the other side of those sclerae. Maybe she only knows how to articulate her emotions in terms of the exact temperature of her skin, of what kind of insect it feels like is crawling across her skin, of what carefully triaged order of events led to the logic of her actions and reactions. 

But perhaps that was the point. 

Perhaps Adora is not meant to see who lives behind those eyes or share sweet sentiments with strangers. It’s not difficult to avoid failure, you see. It is much more difficult to avoid intimacy, for it spreads faster than any end.

“Of course,” Adora says, even as another line of sweat streams down her temple. 

“May I?” The princess holds up her hand, the back of it hovering over Adora’s face. Dumbly, and with the feeling that it would likely lead to more struggles if she refused, Adora nods. Perfuma brushes her knuckles just faintly over her forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“I’m fine.” Adora retracts from her touch. “Thank you, but I am just adjusting to the climate, still.”

Perfuma’s mouth presses into— not quite a frown, but naked concern, something Adora feels embarrassed to be on the receiving end of.

Adora gestures to the scroll in front of them. “Maybe we should—”

“How are you sleeping?”

“Fine. Now, with vowels, things start to get—”

“You’re losing it, aren’t you?”

Adora’s stomach lurches, like the bodily slam of inertia throwing her intestines against the walls of her abdominal cavity. The nausea is slick, broiling.

Even still, Adora smiles. “I have lost nothing.”

It’s not until Perfuma reaches for her face again that she realizes, horrifyingly, that she’s crying. In her defense, it has the same salty tang as her sweat and runs just as coolly down her face. She only notices because Perfuma wipes the tears away with her thumbs.

“Don’t fight it, Adora,” Perfuma tells her. “Don’t make a war out of your heart. To let go is half the battle.”

Adora jerks to her feet, bumping her knee against the table in the process, and the pencils rattle across the wood. “I-I have to go. I’m sorry to cut this short, but we can pick back up tomorrow.”

She expects Perfuma to tell her to stay, but the princess only nods as if Adora’s just told her she’s taking a toilet break. Maybe it’s because of this nonchalance that Adora forgets to wipe off the remaining scatter of tears on her face before she leaves. It’s only outside Perfuma’s tent that she pulls up the neck of her shirt to scrub her face.

The heat is making her delirious, she realizes as she walks back to her own tent, sticking to the edge of the paths, and she has half a thought to wonder if this is another one of her strange dreams.

A stab of pain jolts behind her eyes, somewhere deep and _intimately_ cold, which poses a startling contrast to the furnace of her skin. Adora staggers off the path. It takes her a moment, then, to even realize she hasn’t fallen to the ground, and she’s only leaning against a thick cedar like a drunken fool. Her balance has flipped one-eighty and it feels like the clouds are beneath her feet, the ground high above her head, and she clings to that damn tree for dear life.

Yes, so— right. Okay.

It appears that something is terribly wrong. She can see that.

She’s not sick. She can’t be. A spiked temperature has never been a precursor to the long sleep, and Adora would have noticed by now if she’d been forgetting anything of her regular routine. She’s not sick — at least not with _that._

 _Let go, let go, let go_.

It is with her head in her hands and incoherent mutterings that sound suspiciously like childish moans coming from her own mouth that Adora finally hears her.

“Snap out of it.” 

Her head snaps back in surprise, her eyes immediately shooting up to the figure in front of her. Already the world is slotting back into focus — not entirely, not perfectly, but there are lines where before there were gradients, shapes where there were cloudy smudges, and _up_ has reoriented itself appropriately from _down_. 

“What have you done?” the marquess asks frantically. Is this how Catra felt on the mountain? “Where did you go?”

The ghost crouches down on her haunches, regarding Adora tiltedly. She’s— different. Her clothes are different. Gone is her black, single, long-sleeve jacket with the diamond-red Horde insignia and matching leggings. Her attire is all shades of plum and maroon, her pants torn and fitted, her hair longer. But the strongest contrast is more, it’s _her._ Her skin lacks that once human glow, her voice that throaty heart. She looks at Adora both like she is staring right through her to the bark and wood behind her and like— like she sees the world within her.

Catra reaches out for her. Adora raises her own hand to meet her, and when the ghost’s hand settles on her cheek (not really, not like the other day, this is just the mist of snow), Adora attempts to cover her hand with her own.

“I mean it,” Catra says, and then she smirks. “Shadow Weaver is gonna blame me if your ass reeks of moonshine during drill. So snap out of it, clean yourself up, and get your ass out of bed.”

When Adora struggles to focus, it’s not just her vision. There’s a barely-there patch of _something_ at the edges of her mind so acute it’s painful, like something too far in her peripheral vision to catch. Any time she tries it aches like her eyes are rolling into the back of her head, canine sharp and plasmic cold. It’s far from a sore spot, it’s a punched hole too polished and perfect, like the cool metal of bolt in her mouth among the flesh and enamel.

“You know, it’s pretty messed up when you think about it,” Not-Catra is saying, the ghost of a ghost. Adora misses her touch, because even something so soul-strickenly cold is preferable to this echo.

“What is?” she asks, but Catra is already talking over her, like the person she’s talking to is not the marquess at all.

“Shadow Weaver said I was your responsibility, but I’m still the one always cleaning up after you.” Catra laughs, high-pitched and carefree, and Adora wants to vomit. “What d’you think she’d do? If she ever realized how useless we are without each other?”

She can’t help it. Adora stumbles forward on her hands and knees, scrabbling for the foggy wisps of her, but Catra is already gone, but Catra was never there, but there is only air for her to fall through. She slumps through a hot, empty _nothing_ , and she sobs into the etheria, because this planet might just be the only family she has ever known.

⚔

She doesn’t stay there for long.

Eventually the world reorients itself, and it has not ended in her sanity’s absence. Supposedly.

Adora picks herself up from the grass, the evening air being the only salve that soothes her still-hot skin. The world is no longer spinning and she can stand on two feet now, at least. She flicks presses of grass and leaves off her elbows, wipes the snot from her mouth. The planet still turns on with life even if she isn’t ready for it to.

Adora picks herself up from the grass, and she walks back to her tent like nothing has changed, because it hasn’t. There are people to save, lives to secure, and neither her own nor that of a ghost can be high on that list. 

⚔

_“They don’t think she’s coming back,” Adora is saying._

_The girl sits beside her on the metal ship’s edge, the dark water a wasteland beneath their dangling feet. It’s the same girl it always is. The one who Adora pushes and the one who pushes back._

_“Do you think she will?” she asks._

_Adora’s not sure if they’ve ever been particularly close (she doesn’t think so) but this question upsets her still. “Do_ you _?”_

_“I mean, I want her to. For your sake, mostly. But between you and me? I was never much of a fan.”_

_Bold words. “But you don’t think she’s actually going to.”_

_The girl doesn’t pause exactly, but she looks at Adora like they’ve had this conversation before. “I don’t think she’s going to unless we do something about it.”_

_Adora refuses to cry. “I have orders to call it off. The searches.”_

_“I thought Shadow Weaver already approved everything?”_

_“She did. Hordak didn’t.”_

_Who? The name tastes familiar on her tongue, sounds foreign to her ears._

_The girl smirks, such a sharp, strong-willed thing. “Oh c’mon. Since when has being told no ever stopped you from anything?”_

⚔

Adora still wakes with someone else’s cries in her throat, but she stops searching for a companion in her room.

⚔

The lessons continue as they are supposed to. She teaches Perfuma on transcriptions and faraday cages to block out electromagnetic fields. Perfuma teaches her on alternative medicines and osteopathic techniques to massage muscles from trauma or draw a brain from slumber. They teach each other all the ways a body can endure and stretch, either in the sinews of its tendons or the reaches of the mind.

Perfuma does not ask again about what Adora has lost.

The days pass on, as they should, without interruptions from aberrations that have no business here.

⚔

“Catra,” Adora hisses to the empty field. The midnight wind whips her loose hair about her shoulders like sharp vines. If there’s anyone else awake at this hour and within earshot, at this point she deserves to be discovered as insane.

Only the breeze answers her, and it’s not even enough to cool her fever. Adora spins in a circle, casting her eyes all across the indigo landscape faintly glowing in the moonlight.

She huffs. “I’m only going to say this once, and it is really only a courtesy that I say it at all, so you better be here for it.”

“Ooh, such a good samaritan you are.”

Adora whirls again, and— 

Catra stands in front of her, back in her half-black attire and single long sleeve. Her arms are crossed, and she looks as solid and alive as she had the first day Adora met her.

“You summoned me, O’ powerful, heinous bitch?” she asks.

Adora, being the eloquent scholar trained from birth to communicate as efficiently and swiftly as any living being can, says, stupidly: “You’re back.”

This once might’ve amused her, maybe she even was fond of it. Now Catra looks at her with such contempt that it’s hard to remember she ever looked at her in any other way.

“I never left.” Before Adora can get her hopes up, Catra’s mouth twists scornfully. “I can’t go anywhere until you undo your stupid curse.”

“I didn’t curse you.”

“So you keep saying. And yet, look at me — still cursed. Wild.”

“I— Okay.” Adora inhales sharply, steeples her fingers together beneath her chin. “I’m leaving.”

Catra only raises her eyebrows in response.

“Like for Salineas. I’m leaving for Salineas tomorrow.”

“Is this an invite to your going-away party? You know I didn’t get one last time. Must’ve gotten lost in the mail.”

“Again, I will do you the courtesy of ignoring the fact that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I thought you should know because—”

“Hold on, hold on.” Catra gives a sharp laugh, lifting a hand. “You’re ignoring that for my sake? No, you don’t get to be selfish and act like it’s for my benefit. At least admit you don’t want to face the truth because it’s too inconvenient for you and your perfect little life.”

Adora shuts her eyes and counts to three before opening them again. “I didn’t call you to argue with you.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry your highness, what ever can I help you with now? Would you like me to go spy on the princess now? Invade her panty drawer for you? I know you’ve always had a thing for the lacy ones.”

Adora doesn’t even know what that _means_ and her cheeks still burn. “I called you because, believe it or not, I do keep my promises and I care about you, so I figured you would like to know I’m leaving before you blow up in a pit of smoke.”

“You wouldn’t know how to keep a promise if your life fucking depended on it.”

It only occurs to Adora now, with a bead of sweat trailing down her forehead, that this could all very well be just another hallucination from her fever. Catra could already be gone, and this ultimate kiss of hysteria could be all that’s left of her. Oh, the irony of that. She spent so much time convincing herself Catra wasn’t real at all, and now she worries that she simply is no longer. 

“Do whatever you want,” Adora says tiredly. The ice-cold migraine throbbing behind her eyes is making her dizzy again. It was difficult enough navigating herself out to here, and she’s not entirely sure she’ll make it back to her tent without passing out. “I just thought you should know.”

Adora turns her back without another word. She’s walked already to the edge of the clearing before Catra speaks again, voice low and reverberating like she’s still directly behind her.

“I never stopped looking for you.”

Again — for the third? fourth? nth time? — Adora spins around to find that, as she should be accustomed to by now, there is no one there at all.

⚔

_“You wanted to see me?”_

_She trails slowly into the chamber, not bothering to look around as if it's a room she’s seen hundreds of times already, but Adora never remembers being inside it. The jagged, crimson stone that juts out from the floor spiders all the way up to the high ceiling like a crack in reality, juxtaposed with its surroundings. Its carmine glow is neither warm nor cold, but instead envelops her with a sodden weight, like the photons it emits pang heavier on her skin than regular light._

_When she gets no response, Adora shifts antsily. “Look, if this is about the patrols, I did the math. We’re not losing any fuel by having them just round out their scouting paths.”_

_“I did not call you here about the patrols,” the shadow in front of her says coolly. She stands in front of the stone, her back to Adora, the edges of her form wispy and seemingly unreal in the red gleam. “Do you remember, on your first day in the training hall, what I said to you?”_

_“Uh, no. I was like six.”_

_“I told you that you would never have to worry about being a waste, because you would never be thrown out for lacking any worth.”_

_Her skin crawls. ”Okay, that’s… sweet of you. What does that mean, exactly?”_

_The shadow turns suddenly, and all too quickly she leans down, close enough that Adora can see the olive of wrinkled skin around her chartreuse eyes. The unseeable smile is thick and prominent in her voice when she whispers:_

_“What it means, my dear Catra, is that I will always have a use for you.”_

_The last thing she registers is being devoured by electric dynamite and the sticky sensation of her mind being siphoned from its vessel, like used oil sucked clean from a defective engine._

_And then it’s all red, and then it’s no more._

⚔

Adora wakes up vomiting. 

She’s rolled off her bedspread and onto the dirt by the time she comes to, coughing violently and heaving what little contents she’d managed to force down at dinner that night. The convulsions that rip through her hurt like _sin_ , acid chewing at the tissues of her esophagus and her lungs pounding demons against her ribs like the only way she’ll breath is if they rip themselves straight out of her chest.

She’s crying again. From the physical tolls on her body, from the cavity of loss she can’t articulate or place, who knows. 

It doesn’t really matter. The room is still empty either way. 

⚔

By morning, she can’t tell what’s real and what’s a dream anymore.

Adora dreams of cold metal halls, of the girl with compassionate brown eyes clutching her by the collar of her shirt and shaking her senseless, of the one with white hair and pincered extremities whispering in her ear and dripping tears onto her neck. She dreams of paralysis, of thrashing against a metal table and metal restraints and a metal heart, and then paralysis again.

As if that’s not enough, Adora dreams up her trek to Salineas six times. In each one, she’s convinced that she’s awake only to eventually wake up into yet another dream and find herself back in her bed in Plumeria. And so it goes, on and on.

The final time she wakes, she’s still not even sure this isn’t just a repeat of the cycle, and she won’t just wake up all over again any minute. She’s half tempted to see how far she can push the boundaries of her decorum, because who cares what anyone thinks of her when they’ll all be gone the moment she opens her eyes? A self-conscious anxiety stops her from throwing her danish across Plumeria’s breakfast gathering before her trip, thankfully.

If this _is_ real and she _is_ awake, she’s not sure how she remains standing at all, much less convinces anyone around her that she’s well enough to be hiking a nine hour journey. She doesn’t remember saying goodbye to the princess, just the touch of a cool hand to her face, and then nothing.

She travels alone. The sun beats on her back and paints the landscape with light that looks black to her unfocused eyes. It’s the kind of heat so thick it’s like wading through jelly. The only thing more uncomfortable than struggling through it is to stay still for too long, to feel it swallow her over. 

She honestly can’t tell if she’s walked ten kilometers or ten meters. Either would surprise her, simply because the fact that she can cross any sort of distance in this kind of state is incredible. It’s like the lifetime of resilience-training to charge on even when her body is shrieking with resistance has actually paid off for something. It’s like she’s on autopilot, like just before she had slumped deliriously from her seat she remembered to punch the co-pilot button, and pure instinct and robotic automation have taken over. She’s merely an overheated mess of goo laying on the floor of the cockpit and wondering if she’s already dead because it seems she is incapable of thinking in anything but metaphors. 

Really. She is only a barely-occupied carcass being dragged through the Whispering Woods. She thinks, anyway. She can’t remember if there’s another path to Salineas. She really hopes autopilot-Adora knows where she’s going, because if this is the brink of her deathbed, Adora will be damned if she doesn’t use her last inches of life to complete her mission.

Yes, she understands that if it’s such a hardship to walk at all, then reading and research are out of the question, but: make it to Salineas in one piece first, handle the technicalities for what follows later. 

This is totally fine. 

It’s kind of nice, actually, to let something else take over for once. Perfuma did tell her to let go, didn’t she? Perhaps this is what she meant. All Adora has to do is wait for this to be over — wait until she’s properly dragged herself to the next kingdom, wait until the fever passes, wait until she can string a single coherent thought together again — and then she can continue the work she has sought out to do.

It’s fine.

“Dude. Are you okay?”

Suddenly she’s on her back, blinking blearily up at the break of sky through the trees. She can’t tell if it’s a cloud she’s looking at or Catra’s dizzy face. She takes a bet on the latter. 

“It’s… it’s hot, Catra,” she mumbles, though it comes out pathetically like a whine.

“What the fuck, Adora. What happened to you?”

“You’re…” Adora laughs abruptly. “Hey, you’re cold, right? Will you touch me?”

 _“_ Will I _what?_ ”

Adora reaches feebly for the ghost crouching over her, but she feels nothing. She frowns, feels— sad. “You’re not actually here… are you?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what that means. Can you please speak like a normal person? Are you sick? Did you take something?”

Adora giggles. “You said please.”

“Yeah, it’s usually helpful to getting what I want. Except now, apparently.”

She struggles to focus on Catra’s face, which is a shame, she thinks idly. Catra has such a nice face.

“I thought you hated me,” she says instead.

“Why would I hate you?”

Now, _now_ her vision blends into focus just long enough to see the bewildered look Catra gives her, the thick soup of incoherent thoughts organizing themselves just for this. The world slots into place just for her to see it before it all falls apart.

“What?”

“I asked why would I—”

“I heard you.” Adora jerks to a sitting position, and the head-rush sends her migraine stuttering like a pickaxe chipping away at the inside of her skull, and it’s all she can do to not start throwing up again. “I need you to convince me you’re real, right now.”

Catra, close enough for Adora to see her freckles dance (or maybe she’s hallucinating that too), simply laughs in her face. “I’m not playing this game with you again. No thanks.”

Adora sticks her hand through Catra’s immaterial form again, searching for that pinprick plunge, that subzero cold, but— there’s nothing. Her sweat feels like a second layer of skin at this point, a total-coverage tattoo of inescapable heat, but the blunt edge of panic is breaking through to the forefront of her consciousness with all the flare of a four-alarm fire. 

“Catra, what’s the last thing you remember?

“What? I told you this already. Not much, really.”

“You said you remembered.” She sounds like a pleading child again. “You said I used to do your hair and I slept in your bed and I held your hand after every nightmare and you said—” _Let go._ “You said I left you.”

Catra blinks slowly, sluggishly, and Adora can’t tell if it’s the lagging haze of her own hysteria making it difficult to perceive the world in real time or Catra herself. The ghost looks around them, the trees and the sky and the world, back between them and the space in her midsection that Adora had just desperately stuck her hand through.

Her eyes meet Adora’s, and her ears hunker down as she asks, “Who are you?”

If Adora was on autopilot before, squirming in a fever-dream on the floor, she’s ripping the seat out of its plate entirely now and shoving anything in her way for the controls. It takes all the self-control of digging a bullet from her own wound without making a sound, and it sends fresh rivulets of nausea to her throat and spikes of pain to the base of her neck and behind her eyes, but— it’s all nothing, nothing at all, in comparison to the vicious horror of watching herself be forgotten right in front of her.

There’s something forbidden about watching memory fade, seeing someone forget you. Like a sun that doesn’t make its return trip, like leaves unable to grow back in the spring, a coded program written only to erase itself. 

It’s not in her eyes. It’s in the slow slack of her posture, how she lets her guard down, the childlike awe as she takes in their surroundings, on the cusp of innocence untainted by age. Really, her eyes are all that remain the same. Like tectonic plates around a core, her body shifts and her form shimmers, but her eyes are the same. 

The sight, however, is no longer.

“Where… where am I?”

“Catra, listen to me,” Adora says, with all the authoritative command of a sad onion rotting in a cupboard. “I’m—”

She’s what? The person who Catra mistook for her long-lost childhood friend-turned-enemy? The person who has accomplished nothing in her promise to help her figure out how and why this happened to her? The person who was ready to leave her for dead if she didn’t follow behind her?

Catra flickers before her, winces like it pains her. “Am I dead?”

 _“No_.” Adora shakes her head adamantly, and this time she’s perfectly aware that she’s crying because the drops flood down her face like battery acid, and she swears they must leave welts in their wake for how they burn.

“Am I dying?”

_No, no you’re not, of course you’re not, I’d never let you—_

“Yes,” Adora gasps. “I’m so sorry, yes, you are.”

Catra flickers again, and this time she doesn’t return fully. She’s half a shadow, half a mirage. “Why?”

“Because I—” Something in her shifts, a boulder inching just barely from its dome. The words fall from her mouth like ash. “Because I don’t remember you.”

When Catra flickers again, she disappears entirely this time. Whatever little orderliness that Adora was capable of having in this fevered state is long gone, because the serene universe around her bears upon her now with a gentle gaze, and Adora chews off that cosmic civility like a bloody finger and wears her throat raw.

Adora sobs, keeling onto the ground yet again, fingers finding purchase and home in the grass. She hiccups in mouthfuls of dirt and leaves. “Please don’t go, please I’m sorry, please _come back_.”

The heat is astonishing. It’s unlike anything else, like not only is her blood and sweat laced with magma itself, but as if every cell in her body is working together for the sole intent of burning her at the stake.

She doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not, if that isn’t clear by now, but she knows it’s not a dream that sends flashes of memory through her mind. Not imaginary, not nightmarish delusions, not someone else’s recollections, but just—

Catra, the backdrop of an industrial graveyard behind her, eyes blinking back the cold, red lips around a smile like an inferno.

Catra, the startled wrinkle of her nose, the warm press of her mouth against hers, her velvet exhale was a vow that Adora swore to never break.

Catra, her laugh like dandelion wine, her hand under Adora’s chin, she would’ve given her anything.

Of course this is how she breaks. Of course it was in gaining everything that she loses it all.

“I remember you,” she says through soil on her teeth and snot from her nose, the grass matted to her forehead and arms, even as the franchise of her factory-made mind collapses like—

Not like paper, not like the snap of a twig or the malleable meat of a heart — but like a centuries-old empire in its final stand, because it takes more than an army to take one to its knees, and Catra is more than a military miracle.

“I remember,” she repeats, quieter this time, before it all is dark again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself i wasn't going to end this on a cliffhanger and yet here we are


	5. i never knew daylight could be so violent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now guest-starring a fandom favorite

When Adora wakes up, she doesn’t feel better, but she certainly feels— 

Different. The same. Both. Simultaneous experiences struggling to synchronize within the same space, oil and water shaken in a jar. 

It’s too difficult to tangle whether this is yet another dream or not for Adora to figure out exactly _how_ it’s different, but it is. The migraine is gone, but that counts for little. The heat is not so sickly anymore, no longer frying her nerves and cutting off her circulation from the rest of the world. She’s aware that she’s laying down, her back against a familiarly soft, cushioned surface.

No, not familiar. She grew up on a bed hard as a tread of rocks.

But that’s not true; her bed in the athenaeum was furnished with the finest cotton and threads Eternia had to—

 _No_.

What was wrong before is not wrong now, but something dreadfully awry is still here.

Adora opens her eyes, and two realities consume her at once like a beast fighting to chew off its own limb.

⚔

“Oh, girlie’s drooling on my pillow.”

“Don’t look at me. You want her moved, do it yourself.”

“Move her? How could you suggest such an awful thing? That sweet girl is sleeping.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Just make sure you scrub those linens extra fine.”

“I’m not doing your laundry, you old bat.”

There’s a quick rustle, like something swiping through the air. “What did I just say? Let the poor princess rest.”

“I told you she’s not— okay whatever. Look, she’s been resting for two days. Shouldn’t you do something?”

“Nonsense, it’s only been a few hours.”

“ _Days_. You’re losing your berries, lady.”

“If I have lost my berries, then dearie you have a much bigger problem than just a couple walnut cakes.”

“That literally means nothing to me. Can you just tell me when she’s going to wake up?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You said you could help her.”

“I said— Oh dear, that reminds me. Come, quick, help me gather the squirrel-moose droppings before they sour.” There’s another brush of fabric.

“For the last time, I can’t actually…”

Both voices become muffled, reduced to nothing more than cloudy junk, and Adora opens her eyes once more. 

The last time she woke up, the weight of two histories nearly tore her in half. Either she passed out from the overwhelming confusion and her brain was simply so horrified at the turbulence of conflicting existences that it knocked her right out, or she’s still sick. With— something.

Regardless, she wants to be alone when she crawls to consciousness this time. She wants to be alone when she sorts through her disoriented thoughts while she tries to figure out where she is. She wants to be as alone as one can be with two consciousnesses battling for the front line.

She’s in some kind of hut, or something. Two beams of log criss-cross along the roof above her head into a dome, and spirals of vine and leaves are woven among them to filter out the outside elements. She would think she’s back in Plumeria if only for the rustic structure, but it has none of their signature ornaments or expert lacework of cooling plants for best quality air-control. The chaos of the ceiling above her looks less Etherian-made and more literally made with the terrain of Etheria itself, like the underside of a tree stretched to accommodate this space, like something already occupied it.

She pauses. When did she start caring about architecture? 

The last thing she remembers is curling into her bottom bunk, a crude childhood drawing etched into the panel beside her—

That’s not right. 

There was a field. The woods. She had soil in her mouth, under her nails; she can still feel her swollen, puffy eyes.

Maybe. It could have been either. They both felt like yesterday, but the narrow, lumpy mattress was hazy and felt further away, though she knew the field wasn’t quite the whole story. There was something else, another factor to consider, a gaping chasm between the two memories like a poorly stitched bond was torn out. There was—

“Catra,” she gasps, lurching up in the bed.

She half expects to hear that wry chuckle from behind her, to turn and see that otherworldly ghost lingering just by the window with crossed arms and a pensive frown.

There’s no one. A dusty hut full of dying clutter, a window mostly covered by branches and half-dead leaves, an already dead furnace. But no one amongst it.

There’s not a lot Adora can assure herself of, especially without Catra to fill in the blanks. But the one thing she clings to — the one thing she can believe beyond all doubt now — is that Catra is real. No matter the two worlds struggling to find resonance in Adora’s head, there is one constant ebbing between the two, and that all ends and begins with a ghost, a girl, an anchor.

She untucks her legs from the covers and her feet are bare when they brush the cold ground, dust and dirt already tickling between her toes. It’s an unfamiliar feeling all around, in either memory. Small consolations.

She’s not in Plumeria, but when she takes one look out the crowded window , she can see that she’s likely still in the Whispering Woods. It can’t be too far from Perfuma’s kingdom either, but she can’t tell if she’s closer to the seaport that would help her reach Salineas, or if she’s been taken back in the direction of Brightmoon. She’d have to inspect the overgrowth outside to really pinpoint the exact region.

Her knees don’t buckle, but she stumbles, her hand shooting for the root walls to balance herself, because— 

Why does she know this? Why is she so _horrified_ that she knows this? 

There’s both too much and too little to investigate within the narrow confines of the hut. It really is mostly clutter. Broken brooms, pottery so dusty and cracked that it must be useless, various stacks of papers held together by clumsy strings of a spine that must have resembled books once upon a better time. The furnace is off and abandoned, but when Adora hovers near it, the coals still emanate a gentle warmth, and a faint aroma of food still lingers in the air. Now that her feverish nausea has passed, Adora has the stamina for hunger, and her stomach growls at merely the crumbs of a cooked meal’s scent. But it had to have been cooked at least an hour ago if the lukewarm coals are anything to go by.

She doesn’t really want to leave the confines of the hut, however feeble the protection it’s wobbly structure offers, because there _is_ some inexplicable comfort to it. But she’s still awake, not yet struck unconscious by two minds in battle for the pilot’s controls in her head. So her options are to wait patiently for whoever those people were and to have them answer her questions, or to go out there and find the answers herself.

Both inhabitants in her head agree: Adora has never stood by and waited for her problems to be solved by someone else. Her memories may be overlapping ditches of enmeshed delirium, but nowhere in that tangle can she remember coming here. So yes, wherever this is, she was brought here intentionally.

Still, she’s cautious. She pokes a head out the tarp of fabric hanging over the empty doorway, glances around the clearing outside. She’s not sure that it’s a blessing or a disappointment that no one is around, but her thoughts remain grim. Barefooted and wearing baggy clothes that aren’t her own — where _are_ her clothes? — Adora treads carefully out into the clearing, and the sunlight streaming upon her as the melody of birdsong surrounds her makes her feel as if she never left.

It would be beautiful, comforting, a relic worthy of awe if not for the fact that something so familiar is also something she is convinced she has never seen before.

Ah, there it is. Only a few meters from the door, Adora sinks to the ground on her knees like something wounded. Figures she only made it this far.

It’s not like before. This is not a splitting migraine or a high-running fever that makes her thrash in the night and cough up her sanity. This is the forced cohabitation of contrasting thoughts, minds, _existences_ — the self-contradiction of lives refusing to merge.

It’s the plunge of loss for her best friend, something she can’t actually remember, because the last time they saw each other, it was on the slanted metal cliff hovering over an industrial empire with her hands in her hair, her mouth, and then—

It’s the revulsion of having been raised a scholar of solitude only to have this sick, twisted vessel of consciousness thrust in her arms and then told that all this emotional baggage is her own. This slimy thing, a squashed creature of indulgence, distraction, fraternization — the horror of facing a broken mind as her own.

Which is it? How does she figure which is true when they both howl with honesty like two children both hopping up and down, squabbling to be believed?

“Adora? Shit, _Adora_.”

She doesn’t remember falling asleep. Or passing out. Same thing, because it’s probably the only way she gets rest anymore. The grass tickling her neck, Adora opens her eyes. She’s faced with a vibrant blue sky, and it strains her sight.

But the true shock is the two eyes hovering above her. How fitting it is that Adora once thought those eyes were the lens into two worlds.

“Catra?”

“Hey, it’s me.” The girl smiles, crooked, one sharp tooth peeking from the slant of her mouth, and that alone is enough to make Adora wary. “You finally back with us?”

“This is real… right?” 

“Yeah, idiot. This is real. Can you stand?” 

She probably can, but she only sits up as she rubs her eyes. She can’t have been out for long because the day is still as bright as midday.

Adora’s jaw is stiff. “What happened?”

Catra is crouching on her hind legs like she used to when they were bracing for a sparring match. Which is— this feels like something Adora shouldn’t remember. Catra’s form doesn’t waver, but Adora’s brain struggles sluggishly to place her face, whether to label her as the dearest flower of her childhood or the stumbled-upon evanescent ghost too broken to easily fade.

“Do you remember how you got here?”

This game is so routine by now. “No.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“You.”

The vagueness doesn’t seem to cut it. Catra’s eyes are sharp, cutting. “What about me?”

“You,” Adora repeats, firm. “I remember the Horde. Most of what you said. How we grew up together, Shadow Weaver, training. I— I’d just become Force Captain, right?”

The words are difficult to put together. Not because she struggles to believe them, or the fact she recalls them at all, but because it’s as if half her body is constantly waging a war with this truth.

“Yeah. You did.” Catra nods, but there’s still a grim distance to her. She doesn’t meet Adora’s eye. 

“Why are you back?” Adora asks. “You left.”

“I never left,” Catra bites, all pleasantries gone. “Go figure that’s my curse. Leaving you would kill me.”

It’s hard to understand why that jab hurts, because Adora still doesn’t even know the rules of this game, much less the implications behind it. The information isn’t new, not really, but these are still novel circumstances.

Before Adora can retaliate, a brustle of needles smacks down through Catra’s corporeal form, obviously not touching her, and a haggard voice says, “What did I say about moving her?”

Catra hisses as she spins around. “And what part about me being dead didn’t make it into your thick fucking skull?”

Adora can only see a lump of frizzy purple hair peeking around Catra’s silhouette. 

“Oh shush, the dead never use such ridiculous language. They are much better spoken.”

“Sorry I didn’t have time to pass a discourse exam before coming here. I was busy, you know, _dying_.”

It takes a moment for Adora to realize what’s happening, but when she does, it’s like a third reality is crashing in the windows of an already fragile house.

“I’m sorry,” Adora stutters, sitting up straighter to get a look at the woman behind Catra. “Can you _see_ her?”

“See her?” The woman belches a laugh. “I’ve been listening to her yik-yakking complaints for two weeks.”

“Days. It’s been two _days_ , you wet hag.”

“And I’d be a sourpuss to be moved after two hours too.” It’s an older woman, her face caving down with wrinkled skin, back hunched like the ground called for her. She whacks her broom through Catra again. “Take the princess back to her bedchamber at once.”

“You live in a treehouse.”

“At _once_!”

“I can’t fucking touch—”

“Hold on, I’m sorry, who are you?”

Adora speaks no louder than the rustle of trees in the late-summer breeze, but it cuts them both off. They both turn to her like they’ve forgotten she’s there.

“Who am I?” the older woman asks with a hiccuped laugh. “My dear, I’m your closest chance at finding some answers.”

⚔

“Her name’s Razz.”

Adora sits on the edge of the bed she’d woken up on, fingers braced stiffly beside her. The old woman said something about a pie and got to quick work at the furnace with her basketful of various forest litter. None of them look like pastry ingredients.

Catra stands close beside her, arms crossed, watching the woman’s back with mirrored skepticism.

“Razz,” Adora repeats.

“Yeah. Madame Razz.”

“Anything else you wanna share?”

Catra shoots her a look, not annoyed at the attitude but confused, as if Adora’s said something strange. 

But really, the tension between them is what’s infallibly strange. Maybe it should be another consolation that it feels so out of place for either consciousness, that neither version of herself is used to this bleak and despondent relationship with Catra, and so this must be a new experience — something rightfully her own _,_ not a thing to be tangled out of the past — but it just pangs hollow. She feels weak, in an entirely different sense of the word.

“She found you in the woods, I’m guessing,” Catra says.

“You guess?”

“I woke up—” Catra frowns, hesitates. “I… came to… outside her little playhouse. I didn’t see her do it. One second we were in that field, and the next I found you inside on the table like she was about to carve you for a meal.”

“Seriously?”

“Whatever, look. I just did what anybody would do. I shouted at the old wench to get away from you and she turned around, looked me dead in the eye, and _shushed_ me. Like I was a stupid little kid barging on someone’s nap.”

“And then what?”

“And then nothing. I don’t know. Argued with her for a bit but it’s like negotiating with a pile of bolts and screws. I’d rather talk physics with Kyle than try and reason with her.”

“You said it’s been two days,” Adora presses, frustrated with the lack of detail. “Are you even sure? You haven’t been the best at tracking time in the past.”

“Yeah I’m fucking sure. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t lose time; I stood here with you for two days and watched the sun rise and set for each of them. Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.”

“I wasn’t,” Adora says, but she’s too tired to be consoling Catra’s defensiveness. “What else happened then? Who is she? Why can she see you? How can you be sure we’re not— that we’re not both just—”

“Dead? Believe me. It’s crossed my mind a couple times.” The ghost clenches her jaw and looks away again, her ears hunkering down. “She said she could help you, but you had to sleep it off first.”

Sleep what off? Adora swallows, dread slimy in her throat. “What else do you remember? Not about Razz, but before. Before the field.”

“What’s the last thing _you_ remember?”

“Which time?”

That throws Catra off. The hostility wavers, confusion sweeping back in its rightful place. Adora hasn’t really even meant to ask, because she has no idea what Catra even believes. But still, the girl clarifies: “Before all of this. Before everything. Before you left the Horde.”

On cue, Adora’s head throbs. Not with pain, but a thrum of activity like a machine grinding gears as it overworked the system. “That’s complicated.”

Catra waits.

“You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“Yeah, that’s the point of a question.”

“You’re asking me to remember a life I led before I was even born, and— and a life I left _yesterday_.”

Catra’s eyes narrow further. “You’re making less sense than the old witch over there.”

“It’s like.” Adora swallows, an overwhelming bout of melancholy swells over her but she can’t pinpoint why. “I know we grew up together. I know most of what you said was true. But… you have to understand, I still remember everything else.”

“What’s everything else?”

“Eternia.” The name of her part’s home is heavy. “The Grandmaster. My— My people who are still sick. My mission.” She looks to Catra helplessly. “I know they can’t both be real, I know that, but I also know it wasn’t a dream. That life, those memories, they are as real to me as ours are, and I’m terrified you’re going to ask me if I know which one is wrong because everything in me is fighting to prove they both are.”

Catra’s quiet for a while, with that same old pensive face that she used to pace across the training room with when their squad was faced with a challenge more psychological than brute. 

“Most?” she finally asks. At Adora’s silence, Catra amends. “You said that you agreed with most of what I said. What didn’t you?” 

“You said I left you.”

“You did.”

“I don’t— I don't remember that.”

“Yeah, well clearly your memory’s all kinds of screwy.”

Curled on a bottom bunk, touching childish scratches in the metal, crying. Alone.

“And what about you?" Adora asks. "You can’t remember a thing about how you wound up here with me.”

Finally, they return to the root of their problems. Or, one of them. Speculating over Catra’s potential-death feels like something so far off, a child’s play of theories in comparison to all that’s happened since they first met on Brightmoon’s shore. That first day, that first _look_ is too dizzying of a memory to revisit with everything new crammed into Adora’s skull, so she doesn’t. 

“You said you were in a training exercise, and Shadow Weaver pulled you out,” Adora says. “When we met in Bright Moon. For… the second time, I guess.”

“Yeah, and I told you she had nothing to do with it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“‘Cause I am, alright? We were working together, and I wasn’t— I wasn’t just some expendable thing to her anymore.”

The first drizzles of a dream come sweeping back to Adora, dreams that hold a different weight than dreams should, ones that blur like yet another contender for reality.

“You went to her chamber,” Adora says.

“Shadow Weaver’s? With the garnet? Yeah, obviously. Not like Hordak gave her an office.”

It’s horrifying how long it’s taken her to piece it together, because oh _god_ it was all right there in front of her all along — but every dream of the last few weeks comes clambering together now, dreams that were not imagined at all. Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, Scorpia. She thought they were her own imagined figments of the Horde, but they weren’t that at all, were they? 

Catra, cowering on the floor, riddled with anxious defiance before Hordak.

Catra, reigning command over their friends like a ruthless tyrant sniffing a blood trail, threatening Lonnie and clinging to her fruitless hope.

Catra, pressed to the wall outside Hordak’s chamber with beaded sweat, eavesdropping on a negotiation over her own life.

Catra, hiding from the world in her new established Force Captain quarters, Lonnie bringing her dinner. 

Catra, facing Scorpia’s crestfallen eyes, no accountability to stand for but all of the sorrow to suffocate her.

Catra, snapping back at Shadow Weaver with a spitfire tongue, arguing about—

“It was me,” Adora murmurs.

“What?”

“You were looking for me, weren’t you? That project you said you two were working on together before you found me in Brightmoon.” The realization tastes coldly forbidden, pangs behind her eyes. “You were trying to find me. Your first assignment as Force Captain, and you convinced Hordak and Shadow Weaver to let you run point on search parties for me. You strong-armed everybody into it until it consumed your whole life, even when they told you to stop looking, even when Scorpia—”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“She killed you.”

Catra looks halfway between leaving Adora again for the last time and kicking her ass like she used to when they were kids. Adora’s not sure which of those images cuts harsher.

Perhaps curiosity always wins out. “Who? Shadow Weaver? You weren’t even there.”

“I know.” How does she know that? Adora almost chokes, because if not at the Horde then _where was she?_ “The last thing you remember is that she called you in, right? Doesn’t it seem at least a little strange that you don’t remember what happened after? Please, just listen, I saw it, and I need you to trust me.”

“Trust you?” Catra’s voice just about fractures. “I did trust you. I cared about you more than anything else in the world, and I never would have betrayed you, and you _still_ left me.”

There’s no time or spare emotional stability to untangle that right now. “And it never occurred to you that maybe I didn’t leave?”

“What? You want to tell me that you were just hiding in the Horde’s walls, now?”

“No, you ass. What if I was... taken?”

“Oh,” Catra laughs, though it’s wet from her still choked throat. “Please. You made it plenty clear that you wanted to leave when you did.”

“How? How could I possibly have—?”

“What, looked me in the eye when you said your life ended the day I stepped into it?” Catra’s flashing eyes pierce Adora with wicked accusation. “I don’t know. You tell me how you could have so easily thrown away our entire lives in the blink of an eye.”

“But I never—”

“Okay girls!” Madame Razz spins around from the crooked kitchen with an armful of dusty dishware. “Breakfast is ready.”

Adora’s pretty sure the sun set twenty minutes ago. Catra glares at the jumble of pottery in Razz’s hands like it’s an absurd puzzle that she’d blow a fuse over if anyone asks her to solve it.

“You didn’t _make_ anything.”

“Don’t be ungrateful. Sit down and eat.”

“I can’t do either of those things.”

“What are we supposed to be eating?” Adora whispers.

“My fucking brain.” Catra’s short temper with Madame Razz seems to outweigh her lifelong grief with Adora, somehow, but she’s grateful. The ghost gives her a sidelong look, and Adora gets the idea.

They’ll continue this conversation later.

⚔

At some point, Madame Razz either realizes that the dishes she’s placed on the table are empty, or she just forgets this train of thought and moves on, only to later be reminded of hunger. It’s well into the night by the time she does, and Adora can’t be certain that she’s eaten anything since the meager breakfast in Plumeria two days ago.

A lifetime ago.

“Aren’t you going to like, ask her something?”

Adora looks up from her dish — something halfway between a salad and a caterpillar lasagna. It’s honestly not that bad. Catra is watching her with an uneasy gaze, glancing back and forth from her to Razz, who is eating each soggy cucumber slice one at a time.

“Ask her what?”

“I just thought you’d have more questions.”

“I do.”

Catra rolls her eyes. “I mean for her.”

Adora didn’t say that her unspoken questions were for Catra, hadn’t really even consciously thought about it, but now at Catra’s response she realizes that it’s exactly what she had meant. 

Adora shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You woke up in the middle of the Whispering Woods in an old lady’s house, and you’re accepting the life we had together but you’re not rejecting the one we didn’t, and that mad lady can see the same ghost that’s been haunting you for the last two weeks, but you don’t have any questions for her.”

At Catra’s words, Adora feels that familiar, rushing jolt. It’s not pain, maybe something like discomfort, but she can pinpoint it still as these two lifetimes struggling to fit into one single narrative. She thinks as two people at once and again as a third, emergent persona that has to live with them both. It feels like choking on fresh air, starving with a mouthful of food, desperate longing when the aspiring object of her dreams sits right across from her.

“She’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened, to be fair,” Adora says. “You’re pretty freaky yourself.”

Catra’s quiet for a moment. And then, “You sound like her.”

“What?” 

“You didn’t— You never sounded like her before. Sometimes I started to wonder if I was wrong about all of it. But now you… you sound more like her.”

Adora doesn’t know whether that statement dissociates her even further from whatever mess of an identity she’s trying to untangle, or if it’s the first sign she’s finally settling into it. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with those words at all.

“Razz,” Catra snaps, “You said you’d have answers when she woke up.”

Madame Razz lifts her head up from her bowl, a bit of grassleaper tangled in a wisp of her purple curls. Her eyes are magnified through her wide spectacles, and they blink owlishly at the two of them as if she can’t be sure why they’re both here.

“Answers to what, dearies?”

“Like why you can see me, for starters.”

Razz coughs a hack of a laugh, but it sounds more like crumpled plastic than something etherian. “You picked the wrong time for that one.”

“What. The Fuck. Does that mean?”

Adora elbows Catra, like she used to when they were teenagers at an industrial table eating their lunch, but her arm just passes coldly through space, and it probably causes more discomfort to Adora herself than anything.

“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Madame Razz says. “Have you ever not been able to see somebody who’s alive?”

“Well isn’t that just the question of the decade,” Catra grumbles.

“You think she’s alive?” Adora asks. 

“Well now I can’t talk to dead people,” the old woman says with another throaty laugh. “Can you?”

“Question of the next decade, I guess.” 

Adora pushes her bowl away, half-unfinished.

“No one else can see me,” Catra presses, and Adora gets the feeling that this isn’t the first time she’s said this. “Except Adora, and now you. We— _I’ve_ been trying to get anyone’s attention for weeks now, and nothing. There’s something special about you, and you’re going to tell us what it is.”

“You never told me I was special,” Adora mutters.

“You broke my heart. Was that not special enough for you?”

Is that even meant as a joke? Adora doesn’t know. Her chest splinters either way.

“If she hasn’t left completely yet,” Razz sighs, like their naivetée is exhausting, “then there’s still something left to hold.”

Adora and Catra share a shifty glance. Adora asks, “Which one of us are you talking about?”

Madame Razz grins, a yellow, toothy thing that slants her face to one side. “Isn’t that your answer?”

“Okay, you know what? Just forget it.” To Adora, Catra says, “She’s not going to give us anything, and you’re alive, breathing, and slightly less wonky than you were two days ago, so can we just go see the mermaids? These riddles are giving me a migraine.”

Razz hums. “Dead people with migraines? Interesting idea.”

“You just said—”

“What is she holding onto?” Adora asks, a cold tightness gripping her heart. “I— I know what’s holding me. I don’t know what’s real, but I know why I’m here. So why—” Adora waves at Catra like she’s an ornament, a mausoleum that Adora forgot to build, “—is she stranded here with the only person who doesn’t know how to help her?”

“You’ve forgotten things, haven’t you my dear? Maybe those prickly little holes are where you’ve yet to learn the most.”

Catra drags out a groan. “We don’t have time for this shit anymore.”

Adora shoots Catra a sour look. “What are you in a rush for? Two days ago you refused to even look at me.”

“I’m in a rush for you to realize I’m not gonna take my life-or-death decisions from a mad old bat who refuses to give us a straight answer. You’re awake, and you’re okay? Fine, she gave you a bed. And now, somewhat respectfully,” Catra glances to Razz, “I’d rather hold out and wait for an actual all-wise guru with a little bit of sanity left in her. Thanks.” 

“What decisions do we have to make?” Adora hisses. “No one else sees you, no one can touch you, no one knows what’s happened to you. If you think there is even the slightest chance this isn’t all just some coincidence, if you think I play an important role in what’s happened to you, then you can’t ignore the fact that she does too.”

“I can touch you,” Catra says at last, the void of her plastic, simulated breath like frost.

Adora almost reaches for her. Whether it’s to prove a point, her own or even Catra’s, or if it’s because that feeling of a warm hand in her own seems like such a long ago token of comfort, she couldn’t say. All Adora knows is that she would almost love to be proven wrong now.

“But I can’t save you,” Adora says. “And I don’t know how to. So if there’s something she knows, then—”

“Oh, doodles!” Razz interrupts. “The pie is going to burn. Come, come — We must get moving.”

Before Adora or Catra can object to the fact that Madame Razz is running _outside_ when her oven is _inside_ , the old woman is already hustled out through the curtain door, and the two of them are only left with equally exasperated expressions. Adora, exasperated with Catra’s skepticism, and Catra with Adora’s supposed stupidity.

Maybe that’s what Adora resents: that Catra considers Adora’s hope only as an unachievable dream.

“This is a waste of time.”

“Which part?” Adora asks with an unfamiliarly bitter twist of her mouth. “Do you have something new to share about what the hell is going on, or would you really rather gamble on the impossible that yet another kingdom with nothing to offer us might miraculously know an untold secret?”

“Can you honestly say that any of that bullshit makes sense to you? She talks herself in riddles. Even she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“And what if it’s not a riddle?”

“So you speak loony now?”

“She said the answers we’re looking for are in the gaps of my memory. So maybe we just— we start there.”

“Oh, fantastic. You mean that all we need to do is fill in the blanks and everything will become clear? Can’t believe we hadn’t thought of that one.”

“Razz might just be the only person we’ve met with the potential to _fill_ those blanks.”

“Perfuma could. But you already blew that chance, didn’t you?” 

“Perfuma didn’t understand.”

“Really?” Catra laughs, the stretch of her mouth so sharp and so ineloquently sad. “She didn’t? Or you just stopped trying?”

It occurs to Adora now that, the many times Catra wasn’t around for Adora to see, it didn’t mean the ghost wasn’t still within earshot, wasn’t still attached to the scene. Maybe that should comfort her, knowing Catra was there the whole time but just out of reach. 

Just out of reach, apparently still too far.

Adora looks down to her lap. “I had other objectives.” 

“Right right, your dying kingdom, I forgot. A society that no one’s met for decades, one we’ve already established you never grew up in. I bet they’re really suffering without you now.”

“Don’t talk about them like that,” Adora warns. “You couldn’t even begin to understand what we— what they— what those people are going through. Regardless of what’s happened to either of us, I refuse to turn my back on them.”

“Why are you still insisting they’re real?”

“Because I _love_ them. Since when has love ever been dreamt?”

“Isn’t it always? Just something that gets made up in the middle of the night?”

That night, a frozen mouth, a colder city beneath them. Was it anything less than it was simply because of what happened next?

“Why did you come back?” Adora asks.

“Because you're just so damn irresistible, I guess.”

“No, I mean it.” Adora pushes away from the table, exhausted in more ways than one. “You already figured out how to leave me alone, so why are you back? Clearly Razz had my body handled and I woke up just fine with her. So I’ll ask again.” Adora turns, knowing she’s only sparking her own tears by asking. “Why did you come back for me?”

“You were dying.”

Adora blinks. “What do you mean?”

“You were falling apart without me, and I— I didn’t know what would happen to me if I let you.”

She doesn’t know if she wants to cry or laugh. A tangled sound somewhere in the middle coughs from her throat, and Adora shakes her head. “Right, of course. Why should I have expected anything else from you?”

“Don’t get high and mighty with me now. Don’t get it turned around about who left who, ‘cause you should be glad I came back for you at all.”

“I never left you!” Adora shouts, the quake of lives untold bolder and larger in her shaking frame than she could have anticipated. “You want to know what I remember? I took you out on that ledge over the Fright Zone and I tore myself _open_ for you. I told you everything about how I felt, and _you_ were the one who wasn’t ready to hear it.”

“Really? You’re going to throw that at me now? What the hell do you think I’m trying to tell you?” Catra laughs, a snarl on her mouth, as she shoots across the floor as well. “I’m glad that day was so enlightening for you and you were able to get that all off your chest, but as far as I’m concerned you killed me right then and fucking there.”

When Catra strikes a bowl on the table, neither of them realizes exactly what’s happened at first.

Of course Adora knows they’re on far different pages, that they’ve hopped into disjointed narratives altogether, but this— 

They both stare at the shattered dish on the floor in silence, the spilled food, the aftertaste of cruel love in the air like a burnt meal that still lingers.

They’ve already uncovered so much today, but it still feels as if they’ve established so little, that they understand even less. 

Adora looks up. “What is it you think you’re trying to tell me?”

Catra’s thrown off her guard at Adora’s calm. Her hands are shaking. “I— what?”

“What do you think happened that day on the ledge? Because that night is the last thing I remember, and this can’t be what you really think.”

“You left. I told you, you just, you said—”

“ _What_ did I say?”

“You said I was the only thing that ever held you back, and you had a greater calling to chase. You said all I ever did was weigh you down, and if I really cared about you then for once in my life I would step out of your way.”

Even though this was exactly what Catra has been trying to get into Adora’s head for days, Adora still hears it now like the cruel words are directed straight at her.

Finally, understanding dawns across Catra’s face. 

“Why?” the ghost asks, trepidation on her mouth the color of ash. “What do you remember?”

The broken bowl on the floor is a sick joke. Adora just wishes she remembered the punchline. 

It feels silly to say out loud, as if Adora is forcing locker-room gossip onto the life-or-death table of their argument now. As if it happened to someone else, as if this truth was never Adora’s and so she has no obligation to share it now.

“I kissed you,” Adora says, wet and useless dynamite. “I said we were gonna spend our whole lives together, and you said we both would be better off forgetting it ever happened.”

Whose memory is worse to believe? The one belonging to the broken excuse of a person who can barely discern one reality from the next, or the last words of a relic no one else can read?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again, i'm v sorry for the delay in updating. the last few months have been a bit rough, but i'm gonna try and get back into more regular updates now. i have this fic outlined to the end, so i will definitely be finishing it! i appreciate you for sticking around
> 
> also.... i promise next chapter is gonna finally bring some answers

**Author's Note:**

> comments are my main source of protein thank u
> 
> i'm @catradoraquotes on twitter so hmu if u wanna chat. my main is @harrowanthe


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